Speaker 1: You're listening to Comedy Central.
Speaker 2: Another back of the Daily Show My guests tonight is
Speaker 2: a Grammy Award winning rapper whose latest album is called Michael.
Speaker 3: Please Welcome Killer Mike.
Speaker 2: Sure, congrats first time on sweeping all of the major
Speaker 2: rap categories at the Grammy. Now, I'm sure you can't
Speaker 2: talk about what else happened there, but I.
Speaker 4: Did sweep them like like a new broomy your grandma's
Speaker 4: living room.
Speaker 3: That's what it's there for. Grandma has it out to
Speaker 3: sweep up all those Grammys.
Speaker 5: That's out the betting man, the feast of my girl.
Speaker 2: Well, I have to ask the big question though, Yeah,
Speaker 2: the big question everybody had after the Grammys.
Speaker 3: The Taylor snubs Lean.
Speaker 4: Shouts out the tailor man. She she God, damn, she
Speaker 4: wanted the Grammys. Her boyfriend one of the chiefs. If
Speaker 4: she's if she's in the poly mean, my wife need
Speaker 4: a third?
Speaker 3: Is that what Poward gives you?
Speaker 4: Right now?
Speaker 3: You feel like you can throw off polygamy?
Speaker 4: Right now? I feel I could pull it off. Only
Speaker 4: problem is my wife's good with a gun. She doesn't agree.
Speaker 4: But but I'll keep trying for all the men out there.
Speaker 3: Okay, that's good. Yeah. You see like you whatever you
Speaker 3: throw out there is gonna come back.
Speaker 2: I mean, you are un quite the streak. I mean
Speaker 2: as well as winning the Grammys. Your your son after
Speaker 2: a three year search for a kidney, just got a kidney.
Speaker 5: My holy boy got his holy boy a kit.
Speaker 4: I had to talk with him about his kidney like
Speaker 4: you do a puppy, like this is your kidney. You're
Speaker 4: gonna take care of it. Marijuana, alcohol, no, you know,
Speaker 4: but his nurses. We were sitting there as the nurses
Speaker 4: were telling us, and I was like, God, damn, this
Speaker 4: was a lot for a twenty one year old kid
Speaker 4: to be taken on.
Speaker 5: But my kids a warrior man. I just got to
Speaker 5: tell him he's my hero.
Speaker 3: As I mean, frankly, it is legitimately wonderful to hear
Speaker 3: good news happening to a good person.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much.
Speaker 3: What Genie lamp did you rub? What is the what
Speaker 3: do you? What do you owe your success to?
Speaker 4: I owe it to the fact that I was just
Speaker 4: too stubborn to give up. My manager, Will from Active Management,
Speaker 4: Will Bronson and my an rcuse like we're all friends,
Speaker 4: but we have it just saying just get up every day,
Speaker 4: put one foot in front of the other. So I
Speaker 4: have a lot of talent, but it took me twenty
Speaker 4: years to get here, and I was just too stubborn
Speaker 4: to quit. And I think that's that's half the battle,
Speaker 4: just being tenacious about it. And I want to take
Speaker 4: time to honestly thank my children because my children have
Speaker 4: lost so much time with their dad as I was
Speaker 4: doing it. We've had great quality time, but the quantity
Speaker 4: of time has been cut short. So Malik a Naya
Speaker 4: pony boy, Mikey, just thank you guys so much for
Speaker 4: allowing to had to do this.
Speaker 3: You know, I love it.
Speaker 2: I mean you've been you've been at this for a
Speaker 2: long time. And yeah, you famously said like, don't give.
Speaker 1: Up, don't give up.
Speaker 3: You're never too old.
Speaker 5: You're never too old.
Speaker 3: I'm forty five. Well could I could I win a
Speaker 3: best rap album?
Speaker 4: That happened as long as you got a hairline? And
Speaker 4: you do and there we think that's it's great thing.
Speaker 4: It's great bit. It looks great though. Maybe we're too
Speaker 4: old for porn, but rap, we got rat We're saying
Speaker 4: for rap.
Speaker 3: There was never an age where it would have been
Speaker 3: an appropriate choice in my life.
Speaker 4: Eighteen years old listening to Lucan to two Loud Crew.
Speaker 5: We could throw that, dude.
Speaker 3: That was the end.
Speaker 2: I want to talk a little bit about your album,
Speaker 2: a personal album, but I want to also look at
Speaker 2: like your reference Satan a lot on this album. Even
Speaker 2: on the cover right here we have you know, you
Speaker 2: have double horn porns and halo horns and halo right.
Speaker 3: Uh. Spirituality is big part of this album. Yeah. We're
Speaker 3: an interesting time right now.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: People seem to be moving away from spirituality.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Uh, and yet it feels like you fuse a lot
Speaker 2: of your work into it. I know you have a
Speaker 2: lot of respect for the craft of.
Speaker 1: Hip hop right to do it?
Speaker 2: Do you feel like that can serve as a conduit
Speaker 2: for people who are looking for spirituality, who are looking
Speaker 2: for something what do you see that role?
Speaker 4: I came out of a rap album called rap Music
Speaker 4: twelve years ago and it was you know it was
Speaker 4: it titled Rebellious African that be me and in people's
Speaker 4: music for all the people.
Speaker 5: And at that.
Speaker 4: Time I realized that the only religious experiences I really
Speaker 4: had were when I listened to or was a part
Speaker 4: of music, and music is a very big part of
Speaker 4: the church.
Speaker 5: I'm a Southern Black man.
Speaker 4: I grew up in Baptists and Pentecostal churches, so music
Speaker 4: was a conduit to put everybody in.
Speaker 5: The room on the same frequency and the same energy.
Speaker 4: So I actually believe that people aren't away from spirituality
Speaker 4: as much as they're running from the institutions that promised
Speaker 4: them spirituality and just deliver things like give us money
Speaker 4: or we need tithing. I think that people are trying
Speaker 4: to find I think that they're trying to find God
Speaker 4: and spirituality, but they're finding it in places you wouldn't
Speaker 4: regularly find it. They're finding communing with one another, they're
Speaker 4: finding it away from church and out in nature, and
Speaker 4: not that nature becomes their God, as much as it
Speaker 4: gets a lot easier to talk to God when you're
Speaker 4: standing under a tree smoking a joint. You know, you know,
Speaker 4: I won't talk about my thing. But I was sitting
Speaker 4: in a jail cell and I didn't have anything to do,
Speaker 4: so I just prayed and I just thank God for
Speaker 4: three hours. I say, you know, just thank you for
Speaker 4: the blessings I've been bestowed upon me. Thank you for
Speaker 4: the life You've given me. I invoked the spirit of
Speaker 4: my mother and my grandmother and was like, I hope
Speaker 4: you guys see me, not the jail part, but the
Speaker 4: winning part. And after I got out the next morning,
Speaker 4: I got a call to my son and got a kidney.
Speaker 4: So I'm very much a more of believe. I have
Speaker 4: a white manager. Will's a white guy, and he said shit,
Speaker 4: for fifteen years, I thought you were an atheist. I
Speaker 4: was like, no, Will, I was more agnostic. But making
Speaker 4: this album brought me closer to God. It brought me
Speaker 4: closer to the grand being that is designed human beings
Speaker 4: to be here. So I'm thankful that music brings me
Speaker 4: closer to my career.
Speaker 3: Well said.
Speaker 2: Well said, I mean, it's it's interesting you talk about.
Speaker 3: It like that, because I do think I spent a
Speaker 3: lot of time on the world.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I go to a lot of rallies, talk to a
Speaker 2: lot of people, and you know, it's very easy to
Speaker 2: otherwise the MAGA, cru the Trump Crew, or whatever side
Speaker 2: you're in. I think we are. We're on a search
Speaker 2: for something that makes us feel whole. It makes us
Speaker 2: feel part of a community and gives us a sense
Speaker 2: of meaning, and I think without that in our lives,
Speaker 2: we replace it with the quickest easiest, loudest thing, and
Speaker 2: so finding a conduit for potential good I think is
Speaker 2: is remarkable and to be commended, So kudos on this
Speaker 2: way tell me this.
Speaker 3: I'm also a big fan of Run the Jewels. Yes,
Speaker 3: I love Run the Ji.
Speaker 1: I felt like.
Speaker 5: Running Jewels got snubbed a few years ago.
Speaker 4: And one of the best parts about being one half of,
Speaker 4: to me, the greatest rap group going today is the
Speaker 4: fact that this album Michael also brought LP his first Grammy. Yes,
Speaker 4: so shouts out and congratulations to my partner Rhyme LP.
Speaker 3: Hell Baby, I'm curious.
Speaker 2: Actually, what it's fun is a fan of yours and
Speaker 2: a fan of LPs. You hear your influences in what
Speaker 2: you do on solo projects and what you bring to
Speaker 2: Run the Jewels project. I think when you are marinating
Speaker 2: on Michael and sitting down thinking about what is a
Speaker 2: Run the Jewels project and what is a Killer Mike project,
Speaker 2: how do you deling anything?
Speaker 4: Well, it's all the same, so not that it's the
Speaker 4: same sound, the same thing, but so imagine Running Jewels
Speaker 4: the Uncanny x Men. And then if you've read if
Speaker 4: you're a careader of're about to nerd out on you guys.
Speaker 3: Jewel so you can run polygamy into this well man.
Speaker 4: Who boy, who wouldn't want to marry Storm? Yeah, there
Speaker 4: we go. So so Run the Jewels is don Canny
Speaker 4: x men. There's a lot of characters come in and
Speaker 4: out rest in peace to gangs, the Boozac Day, Larroca,
Speaker 4: you know, maybe the Staples, Josh Hamy, all these people
Speaker 4: have come in and what we have there at the
Speaker 4: university where you can find anybody, right, And Michael is
Speaker 4: just the prequel story to one half of the group
Speaker 4: Run the Jewels.
Speaker 5: So Michael is an extension of the Run the Jewels world.
Speaker 4: And you get to see the reason why I rap
Speaker 4: about my mother and Run the Jewels. You get to
Speaker 4: hear the whole story on Michael. So imagine Logan to Wolverine,
Speaker 4: and that's what this is. So this is an extension
Speaker 4: of Run the Jewels.
Speaker 2: Here's the sum Let me switch gears a little bit.
Speaker 2: I will say I rewatched it recently after the George
Speaker 2: Floyd murder. You made an impromptu press conference in Atlanta.
Speaker 2: You're asked to make a press conference, which I think
Speaker 2: is if you haven't seen it, I think is not
Speaker 2: only the clarity of it, the catharsis within it, and
Speaker 2: the call to action I think is a pretty remarkable
Speaker 2: moment over the last decade.
Speaker 5: Thank you.
Speaker 2: Something you said there resonated with so many people. You
Speaker 2: asked people at a time of unrest. You said to
Speaker 2: focus on to plot, plan, strategize, optimize, organized and mobile mobilized. Absolutely,
Speaker 2: we're on that process right now. Yes, I know you
Speaker 2: were talking specifically about police brutality. Here we are three
Speaker 2: and a half years later. Yeah, where are we on that?
Speaker 2: How are you seeing that process on folds?
Speaker 4: Well, I'll tell you this what I was saying at night,
Speaker 4: because there's a lot of misconstruing it and just I mean,
Speaker 4: be honest, people be lying.
Speaker 5: They did right.
Speaker 4: Some people haven't gendered you know. Some people are like
Speaker 4: you were defending the cops and crying. I'm like, no,
Speaker 4: it's not what I was doing. I was actually smoking
Speaker 4: blunts with Noriega, eating fish.
Speaker 5: Sound we're just trying not to.
Speaker 3: Go and that's noe.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, shout south to North.
Speaker 4: And my friend he I said, hey, the mayor called me,
Speaker 4: there's some unrest. I was like, she never called me,
Speaker 4: And he was like an hour after asking for about
Speaker 4: an hour. He says, well, if you're not gonna go,
Speaker 4: I'm not going to go. And you and everybody knows
Speaker 4: the rap rules. You can't leave your homies down. So
Speaker 4: I went with them and I so I'm pulling up
Speaker 4: to the jail with a quarter pound of marijuana, little Stone,
Speaker 4: a quarter public what I mean, I had just scored?
Speaker 4: And I HOLDO does that last about a couple of weeks?
Speaker 1: Man?
Speaker 4: So I'm there and I'm just like okay, and I
Speaker 4: see our mayor who's also from me and TIA's neighborhood,
Speaker 4: and she's doing a dynamic job of telling the police,
Speaker 4: hold off, don't make a move.
Speaker 5: We're gonna talk to the public first.
Speaker 4: And then Tip gets up to speak, and I'm just like, okay,
Speaker 4: I'm still in solidary, mahomie. And then he's like, and
Speaker 4: now kill a mike, and I'm like, oh shit. And
Speaker 4: I just simply told the truth. And the truth is
Speaker 4: what happened to George Floyd was a murder. It was evil,
Speaker 4: it was wrong. The truth is also that Atlanta has
Speaker 4: long been a fortress for the black civil rights movement
Speaker 4: in this country and civil rights period. And if we
Speaker 4: would have burned Atlanta down, we'd have burned down a
Speaker 4: fortress that people could use the plot, plan.
Speaker 5: Strategize, organized, and mobilized.
Speaker 4: So ultimately, all I was saying in that speech was
Speaker 4: use your homes, use your businesses, use your churches as
Speaker 4: centers to welcome people in and plan, plot out what
Speaker 4: are we going to do next, strategize, organized and mobilized,
Speaker 4: and then do the next thing.
Speaker 5: I challenged them, and my city stepped up.
Speaker 4: What I'm seeing in Atlanta now is organizers be supported.
Speaker 5: I'm seeing more organizers come out.
Speaker 4: My man row It down there just gave them to
Speaker 4: May they speech yesterday. Shouts out to him. He's an
Speaker 4: Indian American guy. He's in Atlanta. He's organizing constantly. We're
Speaker 4: organizing around the vote. I saw Atlanta's really welcome other
Speaker 4: people in to try to push back against the powers
Speaker 4: that be. That's what my city's always done. That's what
Speaker 4: we're doing now, and that's what I think we'll do
Speaker 4: going forward. We don't organizers do not have to agree
Speaker 4: with each other. We do not have to agree with methodology,
Speaker 4: but we must start to agree with is that there's
Speaker 4: a problem to be solved and if we waste too
Speaker 4: much time in fighting, the problems never get solved, and
Speaker 4: the oligarchs and corporations continue to run this country.
Speaker 3: Kilor Mike, Welcome to Ladella's Child.
Speaker 2: My guest today is a director an Emmy winning writer
Speaker 2: whose film American Fiction is currently nominated for five Academy Awards.
Speaker 3: Pleads welcome for Jefferson.
Speaker 1: A thank you Wow.
Speaker 2: Feature film debut and you get five Academy Award nomination. Yes,
Speaker 2: I'm curious how you're feeling about it and how you're
Speaker 2: You're wielding that strength now.
Speaker 6: I'm not wielding it too much. Unfortunately, I probably should
Speaker 6: be more demanding. Yeah, but I'm not.
Speaker 1: I'm uh. I feel a little overwhelmed. You know. It is.
Speaker 6: We made this movie with very little money and very
Speaker 6: little time. We didn't make under these great auspices, and
Speaker 6: so to be here right now, sitting with you is
Speaker 6: beyond my wild distress.
Speaker 3: This must be your highlight.
Speaker 1: Yeah, man, this is crazy, you know, truly.
Speaker 7: I am I.
Speaker 6: I don't really get nervous in interviews anymore, but I'm
Speaker 6: pretty nervous here right now.
Speaker 1: The daily, yeah, man, daily shows a big deal.
Speaker 2: Nothing to be nervous about it, all right, So I
Speaker 2: want to talk Palestine.
Speaker 6: Okay, that's great, everybody, everybody get out your phone.
Speaker 3: There you go, start putting.
Speaker 1: This on the internet.
Speaker 5: I'm happy to do.
Speaker 1: Like my public is going to love.
Speaker 3: This, Like, let's get into this.
Speaker 5: Well.
Speaker 3: I mean this movie.
Speaker 2: It causes a ton of conversations. It feels very of
Speaker 2: the now. And when I watched this, I think what.
Speaker 2: I was surprised to find out that it's based on
Speaker 2: a book from twenty years ago. Yeah right, but it's
Speaker 2: still so relevant today. What did you see in that
Speaker 2: story that made you want to tell this story now?
Speaker 8: Oh?
Speaker 1: My god.
Speaker 5: Man.
Speaker 6: So three months before I found this novel Erasure by
Speaker 6: Percival Everett that I adapted, I sent in a script
Speaker 6: to some executives and they sent me back a note
Speaker 6: that a character and had a black character needed to
Speaker 6: be blacker. And I said, I said, I will indulge
Speaker 6: this note if whoever gave it is willing to sit
Speaker 6: down with me and tell me what it means to
Speaker 6: be blacker, tell me how to make somebody blacker. And
Speaker 6: of course that no went away because they probably knew
Speaker 6: they were setting themselves up for like a huge civil rights.
Speaker 1: Lawsuit, and so they dropped it.
Speaker 6: And you know, but that was just one of the
Speaker 6: many instances in my TV and film writing career where
Speaker 6: it's like, people just have this very limited perspective of
Speaker 6: what it means to be a black what it means
Speaker 6: to be a black writer. I have a very limited
Speaker 6: perspective of what black stories look like with what black
Speaker 6: life looks like. And so when I read this book
Speaker 6: that was published in two thousand and one, but it
Speaker 6: felt like it was written yesterday. Yeah, I just I
Speaker 6: was so overcome with sort of this idea that it
Speaker 6: felt like it was written specifically for me. I just
Speaker 6: understood the characters so well.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think one of the targets of this film is
Speaker 2: white liberal audiences.
Speaker 3: And first off, how dare.
Speaker 2: You do you get exhausted talking to white liberals about
Speaker 2: this movie and having to explain race to them over
Speaker 2: and over again, to be like, what is the deal
Speaker 2: with race in America?
Speaker 5: No?
Speaker 1: Actually, I mean, I mean, I mean maybe a little bit.
Speaker 1: But I've set myself up for this.
Speaker 6: This is like, this is what I This is the
Speaker 6: work that I put into the world, so I'm happy
Speaker 6: to chat about it.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think what's interesting about this movie too,
Speaker 2: is that it's not only it's a satire, it's a
Speaker 2: political satire, but it's also really heartfelt. I was surprised
Speaker 2: by that it really follows a family. Yeah, it follows
Speaker 2: the strugg that they have.
Speaker 3: Why was that.
Speaker 2: Important for you to tell and to marry with it?
Speaker 2: It seems like those don't always go together when you
Speaker 2: see satirical films.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's you know.
Speaker 6: I wanted the movie to be satirical but never farcical,
Speaker 6: and so sort of the clip that you played right there,
Speaker 6: I think is more is one of the grounding moments
Speaker 6: of the film. I didn't want it to feel like
Speaker 6: it was so funny or got so silly that it
Speaker 6: became slapsticky. I always wanted it to feel because I
Speaker 6: feel like when when satire gets kind of slapsticky, it
Speaker 6: sort of it lets people off the hook. It sort
Speaker 6: of like says like, this entire thing is a joke
Speaker 6: that you can laugh at. You don't need to take
Speaker 6: it seriously. And I think that this movie sort of
Speaker 6: makes some people uncomfortable sometimes, and I'm okay with that.
Speaker 6: I think that I think that every time I'm experiencing
Speaker 6: a piece of art and it makes me uncomfortable. I
Speaker 6: kind of lean in because I think that sort of
Speaker 6: wisdom is on the other side of that discomfort.
Speaker 2: Well, I want to talk a little bit about the ending.
Speaker 2: I don't want to give it away, but this movie
Speaker 2: ends and you sort of there's a meta ending, and
Speaker 2: I wonder if that comes out of Network notes wanting
Speaker 2: you to end this movie for a certain audience, if
Speaker 2: that comes out with you either not knowing how you
Speaker 2: wanted to end it or wanting to end it in
Speaker 2: a way that leaves people with their own ways in
Speaker 2: which they can end the story, Like how did you
Speaker 2: approach wrapping this thing up?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 6: So, so the novel that I adapted is very mettextual.
Speaker 6: It's sort of and and and the epilogue of the
Speaker 6: novel is this Latin phrase that translates to I offer
Speaker 6: no hypothesis and so.
Speaker 1: To me, that that meant that.
Speaker 7: It was Latin phrase used with mathematics.
Speaker 1: People love that I and so and so. I didn't
Speaker 1: want the ending to be didactic. I wanted that.
Speaker 6: I wanted the ending to feel audacious and so I
Speaker 6: I wanted I was trying to figure out what the
Speaker 6: ending was going to be, and one of the producers
Speaker 6: called me and said, the movie is a big swing.
Speaker 6: Try to write an ending that feels like a big
Speaker 6: swing too, because I was kind of stuck as to
Speaker 6: what the ending would be, and so I wrote an
Speaker 6: ending that feels as audacious as the rest of the movie.
Speaker 6: And yeah, I think that I didn't want to spoon
Speaker 6: feed people lessons like it said, I offer no hypothesis.
Speaker 6: I'm giving you some scenarios and some characters. It sort
Speaker 6: of offers you an opportunity to think for yourself and
Speaker 6: decide how you want to think about things.
Speaker 2: I mean, I do think this movie also asks a
Speaker 2: lot of questions about about what Hollywood wants in movies
Speaker 2: from black filmmakers and what a white audience will respond to.
Speaker 2: And you make this film, yeah, and then primarily white
Speaker 2: Oscar public is like, we love this, And I wonder
Speaker 2: how you is that a sweet revenge? Is that an
Speaker 2: extension of the meta story that you're telling And it
Speaker 2: feels like there's a conversation about people enjoying your film
Speaker 2: that's already happening within your film.
Speaker 6: Yeah, So, I mean, look it is use I'm basically
Speaker 6: slowly cosplaying as Jeffrey Wright. I'm looking at myself right now,
Speaker 6: and I'm becoming Jeffrey Wright normally.
Speaker 7: Wait these glasses tho are Jeffrey Wright, jeff this is
Speaker 7: a Jeffrey Wright suit. I'm going great like Jeffrey right.
Speaker 7: So it's getting more and more minute. I'll tell you
Speaker 7: how mendte it's gotten. The other day, Percival Everett, the
Speaker 7: author of the novel Erasure, was stopped in a coffee
Speaker 7: shop in La This is a true story and as
Speaker 7: somebody asked him if he was Jeffrey Wray, and he said, no,
Speaker 7: I'm not Jeffrey Wright, but I wrote the book that
Speaker 7: Jeffrey Wright is now in the movie based on.
Speaker 1: So it is all. It is all.
Speaker 6: Uh, you know, I like to maybe think that maybe
Speaker 6: this will all be maybe after the Oscars all revealed
Speaker 6: that I'm a white guy.
Speaker 1: I know we will know. You guys don't know I've
Speaker 1: been here.
Speaker 3: Maybe I'll tell you what.
Speaker 1: Maybe I've been in blackface this whole time, and it's
Speaker 1: just a big trip.
Speaker 3: That would supersed the ending of seven four me. So
Speaker 3: I would appreciate if you did that.
Speaker 1: I'm just Toby maguire. I'm Toby McGuire.
Speaker 3: You were telling me, McGuire, this the whole time.
Speaker 1: Court Jefferson is not real.
Speaker 2: American fiction is now playing in theaters everywhere.
Speaker 8: Corn Jefferson explore more shows from the Daily Show podcast
Speaker 8: universe by searching The Daily Show wherever you get your podcasts.
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