Never one to shy away from controversy, Killer Mike was on HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher. The political show delved into Bill O’ Reilly’s absurd claim that the decline of Christianity is due to hip hop. In response Mike said:
I like Bill O’Reilly the character but I hate how white people take him so seriously,” Killer Mike said to Maher. “He’s more full of shit than an outhouse. I’m gonna go in a black club and see Bill O’Reilly with a stripper on his lap, I guarantee you that. He’s as fictional as those books he writes.”
In a comedic moment Killer Mike pokes some holes in Bill O’ Reilly’s statement by saying how black women are some of the most devoted people to Jesus. Even going to compare Jesus to Tupac Shakur.
“He was arguably a black guy, or at least dark,” he said. “Hung with a posse of homies, one of them was strapped with a knife. Went to war with the government, lost, like a lot of black guys do. And everybody loved him more after he died, like Tupac.”
In the show’s overtime segment, Killer Mike explains how Hip-Hop began as an alternative for violence. Also admitting it has gone off the rails a bit, but breaks how stupid it is to link the two.
“All these kids that were kind of the fallout kids of the Black Nationalist movement, Civil Rights, poor white people’s movement, Puerto Rican Nationalism movement – they had street gangs in New York, in the Bronx, that were just essentially burned out. At some point in the very late ’60s, early ’70s, these kids were like ‘We’re going to come up with our own peace treaty.’ They came up with their own peace treaty, decided that, ‘We aren’t going to engage in violence.’”
Thankfully, he also reminded that rap music is not hip-hop but only a pillar to what the culture really is. In another part of information rarely put in perspective is how hip-hop artists stimulate the economies in the areas they come from that never would have been otherwise.
“At our core, hip-hop, every time you see a successful rapper, you’re seeing a job creator in the community. Jay Z has provided hundreds of jobs and created dozens of millionaires and it’s changed the economy in places it wouldn’t have. OutKast in Atlanta, personally changed the economy in the last twenty years.”
Of all the violent acts that are committed in this world and the reasoning behind them, hip-hop is one of the last things pundits like Bill O’ Reilly need to worry about. Of course he will likely spin this on his show sometime this week. As long as rappers like Killer Mike are around to articulate those that do not understand then hip-hop will be in a good place.
But in other news today, a shocking report was released by Gawker.com which reported that Fox’s big mouth also was accused of brutally beating his former wife back in 2010. According the reporter, Bill O’ Reilly dragged then wife MaureenMcPhilmy down a flight of steps by her neck and his young daughter was a witness to it. Good thing he is not trying to blame that too on hip hop.
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