Sunday Music: This Is Rap, This Is Gospel (Revisiting Killer Mike’s “Rap Music”)

Killer Mike’s latest solo album (MICHAEL) is out, and it’s good. But I’m looking back this week at 2012’s R.A.P. Music. 

I hear the chorus from the album’s closing title cut in my head all of the time. 

He’s explaining the ingredients that went into making him. The genres, and artists, and flavors. 

But he’s also reminding us we’re all our own version of our own ingredients too. 

Mixing together in the world – as ideas, as beliefs and beings. 

A version of church. Where sometimes we’re just there. Other times we’re in the front row. Taking it in. Taking the people around us in. 

Sometimes we’re in the pulpit. Sharing our version of truth. Because that’s what people need to hear. 

Amen.  

This is jazz, this is funk, this is soul, this is gospel

This is sanctified sex, this is player pentecostal

This is church front, pew, amen, pulpit

What my people need and the opposite of bullshit

And this sentiment, in his last verse, brings me home every time,

I got things to do, before I meet that glory in the sky

And my baby girl b-day be six months away, she gonna be five

So I pray to the lord he spare me, and I make it by and by

And I help souls stay out of Hell with what I testify

And maybe when I grab the microphone and never lie

That’ll merit that he spare me, I won’t have to feel that fire

So Killa Kill gonna spit that real on each and every song

And each and every poem, until the good lord call me home, gone!