Killer Mike

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.

Being in love makes you feel kind of naive.

I've been a music fan all my life, and you know the difference when the musicians care.

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.

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

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 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.

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

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.

An army took on the Union; an army lost. That nation, the Confederate States, lost. And if - that flag - in terms of publicly or state-sponsored things, or local or county or city-sponsored things - should be forever wiped from the memory, because that side lost.

If your great-great-grandfather participated on the Confederate side, and you hold some sentimental value to that, and you want to fly the flag and hang their picture up in your home, that's fine. But it should not be on anything that taxpayers pay for, because taxpayers are a part of the Union, not the Confederacy.

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.