Killer Mike, known for his lengthy rap career, is also recognized for helping Atlanta communities. To highlight his multiple contributions to his hometown, he was interviewed on CBS Sunday Morning. Atlanta rapper Killer Mike is known for more than just his music. He is also an activist and a businessman. To discuss his life as […]
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Jimmy Kimmel Live aired from New York City’s Brooklyn Academy Of Music for the first time in three years on Monday night (September 26). To mark the occasion, Kimmel welcomed famous New Yorkers Charlamagne Tha God and Amy Schumer. It was Brooklyn-bred El-P and Atlanta’s very own Killer Mike, best known as innovative hip-hop duo Run The Jewels, who stole the show with “Ooh La La” featuring Greg Nice and DJ Premier.
The high-energy performance showcased RTJ’s natural command of any and every stage, but it was relatively tame compared to the April 2020 “Ooh La La” music video that trashed piles of money and “imagined the world on the day that the age old struggle of class was finally over.” The provocative track is housed on RTJ4, their fourth studio album that dropped in June 2020. RTJ4 (Deluxe Edition) arrived in September 2021.
There were glimmers of hope that RTJ’s fifth studio album might be cooking this spring. Nothing has been confirmed, but RTJ are plenty active anyway.
RTJ played the main stage at Coachella in April. They opened on tour for Rage Against The Machine throughout the summer, including five nights at Madison Square Garden in August. Around the same time, they stopped by The Late Show With Stephen Colbert to perform RTJ4 track “A Few Words For The Firing Squad.” And earlier this month, RTJ released their theme song for Aqua Teen Forever: Plantasm
Watch RTJ on Kimmel above.
Aqua Teen Hunger Force is the show that just won’t die, as it’s enjoyed multiple distinct runs since it debuted way back in 2000. A new movie, which would later be titled Aqua Teen Forever: Plantasm, was announced earlier this year and now there’s a new trailer for the film. Furthermore, there’s something for music fans to sink their teeth into as well, as Run The Jewels have created a new theme song for the movie. Some of it can be heard in a new trailer that premiered today.
We made the Aqua Teen theme song for the new movie that’s coming Nov 8 @adultswim pic.twitter.com/Xuj4BGiqWy
— Run The Jewels (@runjewels) September 8, 2022
Killer Mike and El-P are an unsurprising pick to do a new Aqua Teen theme song, as they’ve long enjoyed a fruitful relationship with Adult Swim. A couple years ago, they performed the network’s first live concert, dubbed “Holy Calamavote.” They also teamed up with Rick And Morty for some exclusive merch in 2016, they’ve shared new music as part of the Adult Swim Singles series, and they just performed at the Adult Swim Festival Block Party earlier this month.
It’s currently unclear if the movie will get a theatrical release, although it is set to be available in digital formats and on Blu-ray on November 8.
Check out the Aqua Teen Forever: Plantasm trailer above.
The latest installment of EA Sports’ mega-popular football video game franchise, Madden NFL 23, is just a couple days away from its August 19 release. The game has also turned into a music event in recent years, as the soundtrack has become a venue for premiering new music. Indeed, that’s the case again this year, as EA has announced this year’s soundtrack features a good handful of songs making their debut in the game.
Hits for Days
The #Madden23 Soundtrack pic.twitter.com/l7TMlcwDMi
— Madden NFL 23 (@EAMaddenNFL) August 16, 2022
The 39-song tracklist features 14 previously unreleased songs, including “Run It Up” by Bas, “Extra Credit” by Big K.R.I.T., “The Best (TUA Remix)” by Erica Banks, and “Get Some Money’ by Killer Mike. A couple of the new songs — Money Man, Babyface Ray, and Key Glock’s “No Limit” featuring Bleu, and Cordae and Hit-Boy’s “Checkmate” — will only be made available after the game’s launch.
On top of the soundtrack, Hit-Boy also created “33 exclusive beats for the game’s cinematics.” Beyond the new material, the Madden 23 soundtrack will also include familiar favorites from Kendrick Lamar, Snoop Dogg, Nas, Tyler The Creator, and plenty of others.
Check out the full list of songs on the Madden 23 soundtrack below.
Aha Gazelle — “Tear It Down”
Bas — “Run It Up” *
Benny The Butcher — “Remember Me”
Big K.R.I.T. — “Extra Credit” *
Blackway, Aeph, Koko — “Impossible”
Boslen — “Levels”
Cam Wallace — “Energy!”
Charmaine — “Logic (Lucky Charm Freestyle)”
Coast Contra — “505”
Cordae — “Sinister” Feat. Lil Wayne
Cypress Hill — “Hit Em’”
Doechii — “Crazy”
Dreamville with Bas — “Lifestyle” Feat. A$AP Ferg
Earthgang — “Ghetto “Gods
Erica Banks — “The Best (TUA Remix)” *
Gizzle — “One Shot” Feat. BRE-Z *
IMRSQD — “Run It Up”
Joey Badass — “The Rev3nge”
Kendrick Lamar — “N95”
Killer Mike — “Get Some Money” *
King Green — “Cold” *
Kwesi Arthur — “Winning” Feat. Vic Mensa
Lord Afrixana — “Touchdown” *
Malachiii — “Hold Me”
Malachiii — “How To Be A Star” *
Marqus Clae — “Are You Ready” *
Nas — “Meet Joe Black”
Nigo — “Come On, Let’s Go” Feat. Tyler The Creator
OnCue — “Any Given Sunday”
Pap Chanel — “No Biggie” *
Pusha T — “Scrape It Off” Feat. Lil Uzi Vert and Don Toliver
Risqkae — “The Intro” Feat. Rti$ *
Robert Glasper — “Black Superhero” Feat. Killer Mike, BJ The Chicago Kid, and Big K.R.I.T.
Simon Said. and Jazzfeezy — “You Gotta Choose” Feat. Steve Samson *
Snoop Dogg — “Conflicted” Feat. Nas
Symba — “Go Get It” *
Symba — “Put Me In The Game” *
Trev Rich and Wallis Lane — “Whole Team” *
Ty Dolla Sign — “Champions” Feat. Wiz Khalifa
Money Man, Babyface Ray, and Key Glock — “No Limit” Feat. Bleu *^
Cordae and Hit-Boy — “Checkmate” *^
* exclusives and debuts
^ additional tracks with the start of the NFL season
Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
When Run The Jewels dropped their fourth album in June 2020, they closed the album with the rambunctious “A Few Words For The Firing Squad.” It was a bold and fitting choice; the album was released at the height of several uprisings against police brutality, particularly against the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. The punishing track stressed their distrust of the system and commitment to fighting back by any means necessary.
It has been a couple of years and a whole heap of new problems has appeared to burden the average American citizen with worries about pox viruses, inflation, and the loss of bodily autonomy, but “A Few Words For The Firing Squad” remains as poignant and timely as ever. El-P and Killer Mike stopped by The Late Show with Stephen Colbert to remind viewers that there’s still a fight for justice going on even amidst the slog of daily life during a pandemic.
With a stripped-down that highlighted the lyrics and message in lieu of an elaborate light show, Mike and P rap their verses without a drum track. Only a lone saxophonist accompanies them, growing more urgent and frantic as their rhymes do. You can catch the boys performing the song — and others — on their tour with Rage Against The Machine.
Watch Run The Jewels perform “A Few Words For The Firing Squad” from their fourth album on The Late Show above.
In just a few days, Black Thought & Danger Mouse’s collaborative album Cheat Codes comes out, and they couldn’t resist giving fans just one more preview of what’s to come. After dropping videos for “No Gold Teeth,” “Because” with Joey Badass and Russ, and “Aquamarine,” the rapper-producer duo has unleashed one final posse cut on the world featuring the truly jaw-dropping lineup of Tariq, ASAP Rocky, and Run The Jewels. It’s called “Strangers,” and you can check it out above.
Featuring a signature Danger Mouse beat with a murky, breakbeat-laden soul loop, “Strangers” finds the four MCs spitting multisyllabic verses with no hook, simply beating listeners over the head with bars until there’s nothing left to do but shrug and say, “Those boys are RAPPIN’ rappin’.” Let the debate about who’s got the best verse begin.
In addition to the aforementioned names, Cheat Codes will also feature rap titans such as Conway The Machine, Raekwon The Chef, and the late, great MF DOOM, with whom Danger Mouse rose to prominence in the early 2000s with the Adult Swim-backed collab project The Mouse And The Mask as Danger Doom. The album is dropping on Friday, 8/12 via BMG.
Listen to Black Thought & Danger Mouse’s “Strangers” featuring ASAP Rocky, El-P, and Killer Mike above.
2 Chainz and Killer Mike addressed the Atlanta City Council in an attempt to save small businesses in Atlanta. The Atlanta rappers and businessmen stood before the Atlanta City Council to discuss the city’s nuisance proposal. The proposal was introduced by the city’s mayor, Andre Dickens, who insists that any establishment that gets two reports […]
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You don’t often think of local politics when you think of rappers but in Atlanta, it seems there’s a growing political class consisting almost entirely of hip-hop artists who like to get involved by popping up at city council meetings and the like. During one such meeting on Monday this week (August 1), 2 Chainz and Killer Mike spoke out against a controversial new ordinance that they believe could have potentially crippling effects on small businesses in the area — including their own (2 Chainz owns a pair of restaurants; Mike has a chain of barbershops, among other interests).
In May, Atlanta’s city council introduced an amendment to current nuisance ordinances that allows the city to close a business deemed a nuisance by a municipal court twice in 24 months. That’s a lot of leeway — especially when business owners are being held accountable for incidents that occur outside their businesses and outside of their control. The amendment is ostensibly aimed at reducing violent crime around the city but owners like 2 Chainz and Mike are concerned it could be used to target Black-owned nightlife establishments, which would eventually be overtaken by franchises, according to Rolling Stone.
As Killer Mike put it during the meeting, “As Atlanta grows, corporations are going to be coming into here. Somebody is gonna have a nightlife in the convention city.” He noted that this could result in a choice between “the owners of Hard Rock [Cafe] or the owners of Hooters or the owners of a W Hotel, or it’s gonna be the little people that went to Frederick Douglas [high school]… and Southwest DeKalb, and schools like that” — in other words, locals. “We will not be electing council people from here, we will not be growing businesses from here. Because it will all be turned over to corporations… Are we going to keep Atlanta a place where local people can grow and thrive here?”
2 Chainz also spoke up, saying, “I’m very blessed, and I also like to be a blessing to others, and that’s what my businesses have allowed me to do. They need to retract some of the things they have on the ordinance. And I think crime is up everywhere, not just in Atlanta.” He’s right; crime is up around the country. It’s also still down from pre-pandemic levels, although that could change because of record inflation, a rising wave of evictions (after protections were removed by the federal government), and other crime-prevention protections expiring or losing funding (in favor of raising police budgets which… don’t prevent crime).
Even Young Thug’s father, Jeffrey Williams Sr., spoke up on behalf of businesses in place of his son (who is currently incarcerated because he rapped about his label, which supposedly has the same name as a gang). “If a crime happens by city hall,” he asked, “Was it city hall that caused it? You’re trying to hold artists responsible for the crime that’s in the city. Now you’re trying to point the finger at the nightlife to be part of the crime in the city.”
RIGHT: “Do the right thing and send this back to committee.”
Killer Mike, w/ an intro by 2Chainz, just gave very critical remarks to the Atlanta City Council on a ‘public nuisance’ proposal he says will target nightclubs and black-owned businesses.@KillerMike @2chainz @cbs46 pic.twitter.com/f5ChbPvuBZ
— Patrick Quinn (@PatrickQuinnTV) August 1, 2022
