Toast 4/20 (and Get Toasted) With Killer Mike’s New ‘Don’t Let the Devil’

Kory Grow
·2 min read
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02-killer-mike-press-2023-RS-1800 - Credit: Jonathan Mannion*
02-killer-mike-press-2023-RS-1800 - Credit: Jonathan Mannion*

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.”

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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’s RTJ1 in full plus many more songs from the other records, night two it’s RTJ2… etc. etc.”

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