Hip-hop duo Run the Jewels was playing in St. Louis, Missouri, the same night that the Ferguson grand jury made the decision not to indict police officer Darren Wilson in the death of Michael Brown. Killer Mike made an emotional speech about the decision before the concert.
Photo Credit: Owen Ela
In his speech, Killer Mike begins by offering thoughts and prayers to Michael Brown’s family and the protesters in Ferguson. He then takes a turn to the more personal, by expressing how he fears for his two sons, and the emotion in his voice is undeniable. Finally, he talks about the institutional injustice represented by what happened in Ferguson and what it means for America.
I have a 20-year-old son, I have a 12-year-old son, and I’m so afraid for them…When I stood in front of my wife, and I hugged her, and I cried like a baby. I said ‘these motherfuckers got me today.’…It’s not about race, it’s not about class, it is not about color, it is about what they killed [Michael Brown] for. It is about poverty, it is about greed, and it is about a war machine…the one thing I want you to know is that it is us against the motherfucking machine.
The A.V. Club posted the video, shot by Run the Jewels fan Stephen Bolen, and transcribed some of the expletive-ridden speech. The video below contains the entire Ferguson speech.
With all of Killer Mike’s talk of a war machine, it is only fitting that Zack De La Rocha of Rage Against the Machine recently made an appearance at Run the Jewels show in Los Angeles. In more lighthearted news, a Kickstarter for Meow the Jewels album, based entirely off of a joke that Run the Jewels member El-P made, actually hit its goal of $40,000. The duo later met with the fan who created the Kickstarter to iron out the details of making an entire album remake with only cat sounds. It will be remake of their latest album, Run the Jewels 2, which was released in early November, but was leaked just four days before the official release.
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