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Killer Mike is celebrating 4/20 (his birthday) with a new song, “Don’t Let the Devil,” which coincidentally also contains the lyric, “In the name of Jesus, the reefer, I serve a purpose/I got higher than the skies and fly off the Earth’s surface.” The track, which features his Run the Jewels counterpart El-P and Thankugoodsir, heralds the coming of Mike’s first new solo album in more than a decade, Michael, which comes out June 16.
“[Run the Jewels] is the X-Men, this is my Logan,” Mike said in a statement referring to the movie that features the origin story of the X-Men character Wolverine. The song, which plays into Mike’s audio memoirs, features a helium-voiced backdrop of voices and churchy chords, produced by No I.D., El-P, and Little Shalimar. “My favorite group (US) with my favorite producers!” he stated. “It’s our ten-year anniversary and Michael is an origin story, so I wanted to start with El.”
The new single follows last year’s “Run,” which featured Young Thug, and “Talk’n That Shit!” — the first solo singles he’s released since he and El-P formed Run the Jewels a decade ago. Mike’s last solo album, R.A.P. Music, arrived in 2012 and was coproduced with El-P.
Killer Mike and El-P will be hitting the road this fall with a four-city 10th anniversary tour. The duo will play four nights each in New York, Chicago, Atlanta, and Los Angeles. “We’re doing 4 cities, 4 nights each, and 4 full albums worth of jams, many we have only performed a small handful of times during our whole existence,” the group said. “So on night one it’sRTJ1in full plus many more songs from the other records, night two it’sRTJ2… etc. etc.”
