Pitchfork: What did you do on election night, Mike?

Killer Mike: Smoked marijuana. I’m black and I’m from the South, so there’s no fear on the other side of this that I haven’t faced before. That’s not to say I’m above feeling the pain, but when I speak around the country I encourage white kids I meet to develop peers and friends outside of their cultural group, to develop empathy. I tell people who look like me, “You have to be more self-reliant because you’re living in a time where either the government’s going to have too much control over your life or they’re going to be hands-off when you really need them.” So I’m glad that my music can help some people persevere because that’s what music always helped me do growing up in Georgia during the midst of the fucking drug war in the South.

I’m happy to be for people what Scarface, Ice Cube, and Rakim have been for me. As an artist, that’s our job—to be with you in times of celebration and when the world is kicking your ass, and I’m happy that we can give the world a record at this moment.

Personally, I smoke weed and prepare each day as though I’m a free human being. That means I figure out how to grow tomatoes and collect my rainwater for my own garden. I just bought about three acres of land. I’m sure I’m going to kill a deer, have it go in the deep freezer. All you can do is control yourself and your day-to-day life. Don’t hold your fucking head down. This is a beautiful life we lead in spite of whatever things come against us or whatever team loses or wins. You’re already free. You’re already here. Seize this shit and be. Don’t worry about them.

On some level, did the results surprise you?

KM: No. I was not surprised. I am not surprised. The Democrats did not run the best possible person. That’s what happened. Working class white people in this country are pissed, and we are remiss not to see that. The system is fucked up for everyone, and at some point all of us are going to figure that out and stop letting these little things that aren’t real separate us.

People are just trying anything now because nothing seems to work. That’s what it is. It’s not like, “Oh, this whole country’s racist.” A fucking reality star with a bad haircut is the equivalent of a fucking B-list celebrity with a great haircut and a Gucci belt in 1980s. This is history fucking repeating itself.

We’re Americans still. We’re not a fucking nation of pussies. We’re just not. We have endured the best and the worst from outside and in. We’ll be OK. White folks acting scared—I’m not used to white people acting scared, man. Got to turn it up. We got Russia to worry about.

El-P: Well, you know, I’m just going to rap a lot. I’m going to do a lot of rapping.

KM: We are an American cultural export to the world. You have nothing to worry about.

El-P: Forty-year old rappers who are stoned out of their brains.

KM: Kicking ass.

Run the Jewels: "2100" [ft. BOOTS] (via SoundCloud)

Have the events of this last year confirmed the dystopian worldview that you guys had all along?

El-P: Yeah, it sucks because I see what it looks like for people to be experiencing that revelation for the first time, like, “Damn, you’re just having to deal with this thought now.” I’m not trying to be condescending in any way. It’s just that I’ve always had that idea in my head—essentially that crooks are taking over. That’s something I always felt and put in my shit.

How did the turmoil of this past year contribute to the new record?

El-P: We were all under a dark cloud, and there were times when Mike was frazzled, angry, and didn’t want to fucking rap. There were times where we had to talk, and I had to make sure that he knew that I was there for him and whatever he needed to do, and he did the same for me. That made it into the music and the experience.

KM: There were great parts of this year too. Being a part of Sanders’ campaign was one of the highlights that helped keep joy in my music. I was able to do that trip because I was around this fucking wiry old guy with a fucking crazy weird sense of humor and honesty about himself. In rap, we’re the older guys. But age doesn’t really exist. I’d be around a room full of young people that are crazy about me. I’d be around him, and it was just like being back around, say, my grandparents. He was so sharp with the questions that he’d ask me and my wife.

I brought that joy back, but it seemed like every time I went to record, a black man was being murdered by someone in uniform. You’ve got to understand: I’m at home with my 14-year-old son and my 9-year-old daughter, and a fucking black man is killed on television what feels like monthly. That’s over-fucking-whelming. No one should feel like that again. If I was running stories of women being raped by police officers every month, something would be done, even if not for the fucking national stir that caused the injustice. No one would want to see it every month, but the fact that people have almost become pornographic in their lust to see this shit, it’s just a lot.

So getting an opportunity to see people on a grass roots level driving out in places like Vermont and South Carolina, getting the chance to see people of every race, religion, and ethnic group working together for the better hope of other human beings—it gave me a lot of hope when I needed it. It kept me afloat because it was a spiritual assault just to be a black guy this year, because you keep getting told your life ain’t worth shit over and over and over again, and you know that’s not true. That’s not how it feels. That campaign, making dope music, and kicking it with my family has been my salvation this year.

Did campaigning with Bernie inspire you to want to do politics in a larger way?

KM: I was inspired to do politics before I ever did that campaign. I always knew it was some shit that I’d do when I finished rapping. I’ll always push for what I believe in. I campaigned for the current mayor of Atlanta and I’ll probably campaign for whoever I think should be mayor next. That’s what you’re supposed to do. If you’re an American, you’re supposed to be part of the process, especially if you’ve been denied it. I represent a group of people for whom it didn’t come innately. It wasn’t promised or guaranteed. I take being an American very seriously. I’m going to always be involved because my grandmother really marched. Her grandfather really was part of the Tuskegee experiment, and his father really was a slave. I don’t have a choice. I am in this shit.

Run the Jewels: “Legend Has It” (via SoundCloud)

Even with all the heaviness happening around you, there’s still a lot of exhilaration in these new songs.

El-P: We did it over the course of a year, so you hear those moments where there’s a ghost haunting us and those moments where we’re just fucking high and having fun. I love the fact that we try to make our records available to all of those feelings. There’s no reason why it shouldn’t be. For us, just being able to be focused on some dope ass rap shit is just as important as us being able to have those cathartic moments where we really are working out shit as friends, too. Not only do you have different dynamics of what’s going on in each other’s lives but you’re in a group and you’re making a song, finding those intersecting realities and being able to make jams off of them.

How has that friendship evolved over the course of these last three albums?

KM: It’s that trust in the studio. We’re fully intertwined now in the way that we’re encouraging each other to try shit. I worked with Three Six Mafia some years ago, and DJ Paul was telling Juicy J how to cut a record, and at one point, he put his hand above Juice and he was going like this [motions putting one hand on top of the other]. You just saw their hands become one. That was one of the wildest things I’ve ever seen.

I’m sure you saw something like that with OutKast too?

KM: Absolutely. The thing with OutKast though is I saw it more with ATLiens. Just being a little brother, just being able to be around Stankonia, I got to see them recording together and have a lot of fun. On the later records, they had started recording differently. It just wasn’t the same. I’m happy to be able to enjoy these moments now, because I value the ones I had with OutKast a lot more. I was lucky as hell to be around. They would leave the studio with fucking 20 dudes going straight to the strip clubs.

Looking back at your careers in music, you think previously being in groups and crews allowed you guys to get along better as a duo?

El-P: It’s the George Costanza-reversal theory. Remember when George figured out one day that every one of his instincts was completely wrong, so all he had to do was just reverse everything that he wanted to do? It’s kind of like that. Run the Jewels definitely gave me an excuse to do the group thing correctly, which I don’t think I would have been able to do if we hadn’t met when we were 35.

The one advantage to blowing up in your mid-30s is that you actually have been through some shit and you know who you are. Mike and I are completely interconnected, but we also are not going to ask from each other what doesn’t make sense to ask for.

KM: I’m just a fan of my friend and I like rapping with him. I got the best fucking gig on earth. Being an adult, you’ve already suffered enough from your own mistakes, and the world, to come to this as a humble human being. So it’s not like, “I’m going to do the right thing because it advances me,” as much as it’s like, “I’m going to do the right thing because this puts me closest to the dream I had as a 10-year-old kid.”

I grew up with two parents, and they were my grandparents. I grew up with old people that had already fucking made money and already fucked up money. They had already done everything irresponsible, so the people that me and my sisters ended up with were just in it for the life, love, and fun of it all, and we had a rich life in the middle of a little, poor working-class neighborhood in Atlanta’s west side. Spiritually, that’s what this group does for me. I just wanted to be fucking famous on some rap shit. I wanted to be able do what I did right before this: go to Roscoe’s, walk across the street to smoke a joint, and drink champagne.

El-P: That’s definitely the American dream.

And to be in a video game…

El-P: Just when you think you should start accepting that you’re becoming an adult, all your childhood fantasies come true.

KM: My dad’s in his late 50s now. Growing up, I fucked up his record collection. I fucked up his classic cars. But I never fucked up his comic books. So getting the opportunity to give my dad all those Marvel comics we’re in has been one of the greatest things in my adult life. He lost his fucking mind.

Has being older made it easier to handle this level of success?

El-P: By the time you get to 35, if you’re still doing it, then that means that you got through your moment of holy shit, this may be over and decided to keep going, or the moment hadn’t occurred to you yet. I had already had that conversation with myself and some close friends, like, “Well, I don’t know if this is going to go much further than I’ve taken it, but I’m going to do this shit.

When did that happen?

El-P: I definitely hit the fucking rock bottom after about 2008 and 2009. [Friend and rapper] Camu Tao died, and then we tried to hold it together for a while, and I ended up putting together his posthumous album. That had a pretty rippling, devastating effect on me that I wasn’t acknowledging. I was kind of blown out. I lost all my money, and my direction. All of a sudden, I was like a fucking newborn baby. I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing.

I did Cancer 4 Cure, and as I was doing it, I remember talking to my friend and just being like, “This may be the last one. I don’t know if there’s room for me in this business, in this form.” I had come to peace with that. I was like, “If that’s the case, then fine. Fuck it. I’m going out blazing.” Me and Mike met at the same time and were both like, “Fuck it. We’re going hard.”

KM: I seen the shit, though. I was on his head, hard, from the top. The first day we made some music, I knew he was special. I had that feeling. I understood what Snoop felt. I understood what the fuck Cube felt for the first time in my life. I’ve worked with incredible producers in the past, but when me and El-P got in a room, there was no way I was going to let off his head because not only was he one of the greatest producers I heard, he was one of the illest rappers I had ever heard. I just saw us kicking ass.

El-P: I had reduced my ambition to trying to make great records, and that’s when I was re-born. I was like, “Oh, wow, that should have been the point the whole time.” I spent the first half of my career trying to be everything for everybody else. I had to realize, “Man, you have to be who the fuck you are.” That’s what I encourage any artist to do: just stop giving a fuck as soon as possible.

KM: As soon as you can. If you’re 13, stop giving a fuck now.

El-P: Don’t even give a fuck what the structure of a song is.