F Scott Fitzgerald’s maxim – that there are no second acts in American lives – has not held true for some time, if ever it did. Still, the curveball third act of Michael Santiago Render’s hip-hop career has been no less surprising, nor exciting, to behold.
Killer Mike is now 49 – an old, activist head in a young, Auto-Tuned person’s game. Earlier this year he won three rap Grammy awards – a clean sweep – for his most recent album, Michael (2023), a hard-hitting yet vulnerable romp around hot topics in southern Black masculinity. Or, as a line from Humble Me, the lead track from this follow-up record puts it: “Swept up like a janitor.”
Having begun his recording career in the company of fellow Atlantans OutKast before grinding it out as a solo artist in the 2000s, Killer Mike eventually found success with the more political, less mainstream Run the Jewels (with New York rapper and producer El-P), whose four-album run and Black Panther tie-in provided Render with financial stability. Mike returned to solo form in the wake of his mother’s death, after therapy; he had some straight-talking to get off his chest that could not be said within Run the Jewels.
Render’s Grammy win was coloured by its aftermath. At the ceremony in February, he was arrested after an altercation with a security guard. Killer Mike walked free; no charges were pressed. But it was a case in point in how Black men, even those who have become honoured pillars of their community, can still so easily find themselves in handcuffs. Just as notable, maybe, was the online reaction to Killer Mike’s Grammy sweep. The internet was alight with outraged bafflement from younger rap fans, not at Killer Mike’s arrest, but wondering who the hell this random was, beating Travis Scott.
Humble Me deals with Render’s triumph, his tribulation (“like Daniel was sitting with the lions” – Render is never short of a biblical metaphor), and how being led away in handcuffs was not the most notable thing that happened in that 48-hour period. After the legal dust settled, Render’s son received a long-awaited kidney transplant. It’s an almighty mic drop about not sweating the small stuff and trusting that righteousness wins out.
Humble Me comes packaged here with nine other tracks, a few reworked from Michael, plus a slew of unheard material. Billed as a coda to Michael, it feels like a long reaction shot. Key tracks have been transformed in the wake of Killer Mike touring them with a gospel-inclined set of backing vocalists (that’s the Mighty Midnight Revival choir).
Michael’s Slummer (about the young Render’s teenage girlfriend aborting a pregnancy) and Something for Junkies (a track that treats users of all kinds with compassion) have become Slummer 4 Junkies, a two-part, 10-minute extended meditation retelling the stories, but filling in details, upping the emotion, interpolating Sly and the Family Stone’s Everyday People, underscoring the ubiquity of addiction.
Exit 9 (Scenic Route) – about Mike’s gratitude for how far he’s come – gains an Offset guest spot and features plenty of the choir’s grace. There’s poignancy here, not least because Offset is a third of Migos, the last decade’s big Atlanta talent, but also because fellow Migos member Takeoff died of a shotgun wound in 2022 – another rapper not afforded the privilege of getting old.
These rewinds are couched in quality new tracks. Killer Mike comes in hard from the off, after an Otis Redding sample, backing himself. “It ain’t dope if you can’t sell it, it ain’t gas if you can’t smell it,” he barks on Bussin Bricks Intro, a slapping beat underlining his pugnaciousness. Immediately after comes Nobody Knows, soulful and gospel-infused.
If Songs for Sinners and Saints has a drawback, it’s the overabundance of these piano-tinkling, grownup themes. We’re rarely not in church, giving praise for redemption and multiple chances – a residency that lends a little credence to the younger generation’s impatience with dad rap’s war stories. (Render put his money into property, now he’s “landlord rap”.) Higher Level, meanwhile, relies on an insensitive allusion to Helen Keller.
And yet it’s Killer Mike’s more unfiltered flows that perk up the end of the tracklist, on 97 3-6 Freestyle and a reworked Talk’n That Shit called Still Talk’n That Shit. It takes aim at the young haters. “You gonna respect me like a motherfuckin’ Grammy winner, like I cooked your favourite rapper like a granny dinner,” Killer Mike preens. “I would hate me too,” he concludes, with a wry smirk.
