Top 66 Killer Mike Quotes

My hair is dry. A lot of shampoos and greasers don’t work with me, and so I started playing around with a chemist on a product that’ll work with me.

Rap is supposed to scare soccer moms.

We need more Rocafellas; we need more Bad Boys.

I just like cars, period. I can find something to like about pretty much any car. I’ve had as much fun whipping around Italy in a little Mini Cooper as I’ve had whipping through Miami in a Bentley GT.

I am Michael Render – that’s what my mom named me. ‘Killer Mike’ is what my dumb friends called me in a rap battle once, and it stuck.

My hope is that very young people in America who have experience with the streets, hip-hop, college, higher learning will fuse all that together. I just want to be the music that can relate to both sides, that stitch together their lives or represents their experiences.

I grew up working class in Atlanta.

This is a beautiful life we lead in spite of whatever things come against us or whatever team loses or wins.

I like the New York style of funk, the California style of funk, but the South I never felt like – and Atlanta particularly – got the credit for taking their lessons and progressing on it.

Jake ‘The Snake’ Roberts of Stone Mountain, Georgia, was the darkest! I mean, he could’ve been a movie villain, he was so intense! He also had the hardest finishing move of all time, the DDT.

Ultimately, Dead Prez should have went multi-platinum. But when people didn’t rally around them, I knew the black hip-hop audience had become far less politicized.

The older I get, the more of an anarchist I become, and I don’t mean in a punk rock way.

I’m a man’s man.

For all my proclivities for thuggery, I am a typical middle-class dad. I’m a gangsta rap suburban father!

I have hurt my community. I have to look myself in the mirror and know that, and I have to own that in order to grow past that.

I’m a black man who grew up in America. I’m a father of four children. They don’t all have the same mother. I own a business.

I believe being honourable lasts longer than rapping good.

If you don’t like the NRA, get a million black people to join. Go to the convention. Realize that this ain’t white people in hoods, just regular working class people like you that are probably going to be friendly and engage you. And then add your thoughts to the agenda.

We have essentially gone from being communities that were policed by people from the communities to being communities that are policed by strangers, and that’s no longer a community: that’s an area that’s under siege.

No Child Left Behind left a lot of kids behind.

I’m not going to restrict myself as an artist.

Atlanta is unique to me. You got poor black people, but I also saw this: I saw black doctors, lawyers, educators. All you gotta do is want to be it to see it, and once you see something, it can be a reality.

My biggest failure was trying to start and run a music label. The music industry was dying, and I wasn’t ready to help other people the way that they needed to be helped. I was trying to, and I was stifling myself with it.

I write in the booth and memorize in rehearsals.

A lot of times, our greatest minds are locked into a 9-5 job.

For the people of Baltimore, I don’t criticize rioting, because I understand it. But after the fires die down, organize, strategize, and mobilize.

Rap, to me, is communal. It’s something you do with your friends. So becoming a member of a group was the dream.

My rights are precious, and I value those provided to me through the United States Constitution so much.

I’ve been in the newspapers since I was about 15 – not for rapping, but for real substantive stuff I was doing in the community, organizing around gang violence in the schools. So I had already made my grandma proud before I was on TV. I’ve always been who I am.

I’ve been a sinner and a saint. If you’ve been a saint all your life, it’s pretty easy to sleep at night. If you’ve been a sinner, you’re just as comfortable in it.

I’ve been watching wrestling since I was three years old.

People don’t accredit Killer Mike and El-P with having the humanity that we do. They don’t understand that the darkness and the anger that we rap about comes from a place of love, care, and concern.

My ears are shot. I’m a musician.

I will never take a day off policing the people we pay and keep a public trust with. I will use my camera, my pen, my pad, and my network to do my part, to make sure that Americans will no longer fear their government. Or its employees. They work for us – not the other way around.

I don’t want to be walking around angry and feeling rage.

I shouldn’t have to be preparing my children that the world is going to be unfair to them for the rest of their lives.

Bernie Sanders is the only politician who, consistently for 50 years, has taken that social justice platform into politics.

I have matured as a man to understand where my suspicion of women comes from and how that has everything to do with me and nothing to do with them. I have to deal with that.

I’m trying to get more into television and film. I know, like, a million models and rappers have said that, but I actually enjoy voiceover and acting in particular.

I’m happy to be for people what Scarface, Ice Cube, and Rakim have been for me.

You a role model by way of someone will model after your role. They’ll model themselves after what they perceive is success. That doesn’t mean they take your morality and virtue seriously. They want what you want, and they’re willing to do what you do to get it.

I don’t want to be married to any ideology, because life is a lot more fluid than that, and I think that we’re trained and conditioned in this country to think in teams.

I’m a student of Ice Cube and Scarface, which means the stuff I rap about is not radio-friendly, and it’s very opinionated. and it’s very much from the perspective of a black man in America, and our opinion ain’t always popular when we have a political opinion.

My grandmother had been a part of the civil rights movement.

The best advice that I’ve gotten from Nas is honestly to just be me and to keep staying true to myself. It took me a long time to figure out how to pop, but then, when you get famous, people are kind of like, ‘Oh, well, we don’t want as much of you.’

Black people shouldn’t have permanent friends or enemies: they should have permanent interest.

Being in love makes you feel kind of naive.

For me, muscle cars are a tribute to American ingenuity.

You can’t argue that hip-hop rots away the moral character of kids or rots their brain and still see middle-class white kids going to college who are listening to hip-hop. Going on to become healthy adults listening to hip-hop.

I cannot lie: as good as it feels to get my deserved props, the best part of reading social media after I meet folks is reading, ‘Mike was a nice guy.’

I never stop reading. I read everything, and I read every day. If you never read anything, be curious. Curiosity is the true foundation of education, reading things that we’ve factually already agreed on, and I love reading books. With that said, it’s more important that you ask the question ‘why.’

I don’t know what the hell the future brings. If I did, I would play the lotto and win the mega millions and buy toy cars, real muscle cars, sneakers, and art.

The police are paid by the public and carry a public trust, and they take an oath to protect us as citizens. The police have lost sight of that and must be reminded that we pay them to protect us, not to simply engage and cage us.

Those ‘Pledge’ records did good for me, and they’re the foundation that this Killer Mike is built on, but I was judging myself on physical sales and didn’t understand that music sales were declining overall.

I don’t accept ‘political rapper’ because I don’t give a damn about either political party. I give a damn about the people. My rap comes from a sociological standpoint rather than picking a particular side or dogma or ideology. I just want people to be free to do what they want, as long as they don’t harm others.

Martin Luther King, Jr. was a revolutionary, simple and plain.

I believe in smart people.

Being a cop is often seeing the worst of the human condition and behavior. With all of that said, there is no reason that Mike Brown and also Eric Garner are dead today – except bad policing, excessive force, and the hunt-and-capture-prey mentality many thrill-seeking cops have adapted.

I’ve worked with incredible producers in the past, but when me and El-P got in a room, there was no way I was going to let off his head because not only was he one of the greatest producers I heard, he was one of the illest rappers I had ever heard.

In my heart of hearts, I truly believe that Senator Bernie Sanders is the right man to lead this country.

Being a cop must be hard. My dad was one and never wanted any of his children to follow in his footsteps.

You do not fly the flags of losers over the winner’s country.

Nas is truly one of the greatest lyricists to ever come out of Queens, which has produced more great MCs than any other borough. He’s one of the greatest MCs of my lifetime and in the world. He’s also a friend.

Black people need to share collective dollars and demand equal representation, and the way you do that is by controlling their own economy and putting money behind candidates.

It’s less to do about me – ‘Hey, I’m black and it hurts my feelings; it’s a symbol of slavery and oppression’ – and more to do with the fact that, as an American, I will not honor a group of treacherous traitors. That’s why I despise the rebel flag.

I’ve made classic records, and going into making ‘R.A.P. Music,’ I was determined to top the entire legacy of the ‘Pledge’ series, and the fact that I won a Grammy, and the fact that I was associated with OutKast, and the fact that I’m a Dungeon Family member.