Killer Mike leads a Dungeon Family reunion on his new single “Scientists & Engineers” which reunites Mike with OutKast’s Andre 3000 and DF affiliate Future. Over a gospel and funk-inflected instrumental straight from the late-90s Atlanta breakout, Mike, André, and Future deliver some of their hardest verses in a long time, while Eryn Allen Kane sings the soul-stirring chorus. “Scientists & Engineers” is due to appear on Mike’s upcoming album Michael, his first solo project in over a decade.
The song almost didn’t make the album, though. As Mike recounted during the annual Black Music Moguls Brunch in Atlanta, André initially wanted to nix the collaboration, right up until Mike sent him the completed version with Kane’s chorus. That was when he fully bought in, saving the track from the proverbial cutting room floor.
Mike also revealed in another interview that he’d spent $500,000 recording Michael, only managing to recoup the costs with an advance from Loma Vista Records. The reason the album is so important to him is that it’s his first time telling his full story, as he told Vulture’s Craig Jenkins. “There was never a moment where people got a chance to see the whole of Michael. They saw bits and pieces in the music… I wanted people to know that the character in Run the Jewels is a whole human being and a man who feels like there’s something that needs to be said.”
Listen to “Scientists & Engineers” above. Michael is due June 16 via VLNS/Loma Vista.