Yahoo Autos The Cars of Hip-Hop Legend Killer Mike
Killer Mike is headed down many paths, uncertain where any of them will lead. The rapper, actor, entrepreneur, and activist—best known as one-half of the legendary rap duo Run the Jewels—should live a frantic life. Instead, he’s calm and organized, a careful thinker and thoughtful speaker. Fresh off a tour with Rage Against the Machine, Mike invites Road & Track to his new garage in South Atlanta for a Corona and a chat. This is where Mike keeps a few of his cars, machines integral to his lofty goals for the surrounding neighborhood.
East Point, best known to outsiders for the name check in Outkast’s “ATLiens,” sits adjacent to Hapeville, a gentrified town buttressed by America’s busiest airport. To get there, you cross literal train tracks. Body shops, upholsterers, and mechanics with hand-lettered signs thrive; this is where things get fixed. I circle the neighborhood, passing factories, dollar stores, mom-and-pop chicken restaurants, and a lovely little city hall.
At a nondescript building surrounded by chain-link fencing, Anthony greets me. Anthony is the events coordinator for VLNS (pronounced “villains”), Mike’s catchall brand for his many businesses outside music. Mike is running a few minutes late, he says on a phone call, incredibly apologetic. Larry, an old-timer and lifelong mechanic, arrives. He pulls a walker from the bed of his weathered Super Duty. We chat about Fox-body Mustangs and his extensive collection of Sunbeams while Anthony rolls up the bay doors. Daylight fills the warehouse.
A former mechanic shop, this eight-bay cinder-block structure is mid-renovation. The freshly poured parking lot sets the property apart from its crumbling neighbors, though the shop’s interior still smells like a whiff of gasoline evaporating through a carburetor. A dozen muted TVs every which way are tuned in to local news stations, political ads constantly flashing in the run-up to the midterm elections.
Mike arrives in a white Escalade wearing GM manufacturer plates. He’s smiling. The man isn’t what you’d expect from someone nicknamed “Killer” but exactly what you’d expect from Michael Render, the community organizer and Billboard Changemaker Award winner behind the ominous nom de plume. Mike hops out, gives dap and a hug, and ambles over to the shop’s lounge. He’s magnetic, drawing attention from every corner of the large room. Part of this is thanks to Killer Mike’s sheer size, but mostly it’s the calm confidence earned from decades spent captivating stadiums full of screaming fans.
I ask about the Caddy.
“They gave me that for doing the commercial,” Mike says. “I asked for the Escalade-V, the fast one, the one in the actual spot, but it wasn’t available yet. Imma keep bugging ’em, though. I want that shit. Have you heard it? That [C7] Z06 motor in a truck? That’s fuckin’ fire, man.”
I’m going to like this guy.
We sit at the black-painted plywood bar while our photographer, Gunner Stahl, sets up. Mike unpacks a backpack. He grabs a few pairs of his trademark square-rimmed glasses in varying tint levels, laying them out light to dark. He draws a thick gold chain from the bag and a couple of matching bracelets. Then comes the Rolex Datejust with an iced-out bezel. He throws it all on for the photos. While Stahl shoots Mike posing with a Cutlass, garage manager Swiff (a.k.a. Cutmaster Swiff, who spins for Atlanta’s famous hip-hop duo, Outkast) tells me about their plans for the building.
“We just got this place, but it’s coming along. It’s going to be so much more than a garage. It’s going to be an event space, a creative agency, a gathering spot, a place to keep cars, a place for people to create stuff,” Swiff says.
“We don’t really know exactly what the endpoint is,” Mike says from across the room. “But we have time to figure it out. We got it cheap, at the right time, you know? I really want to take over this whole block. We even got the buildings next door.” He gestures in the direction of a much larger two-building compound outside.
The photo session ends. The chains and jewels get stuffed back into the bag. Mike talks about using his money from music to buy up nearby real estate and open local businesses in his neighborhood, providing jobs in the process.
“We got the barbershops; those are going well. The people who owned them before didn’t have the best reputation, so we had to get creative. We started giving Hot Wheels to the kids who would come in for haircuts, and they wanted to keep coming back to collect them,” Mike says. “Then I started parking my cars out in front of the shops, which got their dads interested in coming down too. It worked, and now those businesses are doing well. I’ve got one of my Trans Ams down there right now.”
Mike’s also finishing the renovation of neighborhood staple Bankhead Seafood in conjunction with Atlanta rapper T.I. All of this disparate work in East Point brings Killer Mike’s mission into focus.
“I love Cars & Coffee events, but they didn’t have that stuff when I was growing up, and even now they don’t have Cars & Coffee in my neighborhood. With these buildings and parking lots, we can have regular events to get people from the neighborhood involved in cars early, so they can be inspired by them the way I was. Once we renovate this space, we can rent the space out for events. We use my team to help with the creative, and we can bring big business into East Point, make it a destination, you know?”
I wonder aloud how Killer Mike juggles full-time duties as a musician with his second life as a community organizer.
“It’s all about putting people into positions who can handle the day to day for you. I sing and dance for a living. That’s what I do. Then when I have an idea for a business, I put people in charge who can do it full time,” he says. The conversation moves to the six cars in the shop.
“That one is the late-night ride,” he says, pointing to a blacked-out Hellcat on nice wheels with aftermarket Brembos, made famous by his TV show Trigger Warning with Killer Mike. “There’s nothing better than going out at 1 a.m. when the roads are empty and just tearing it up for a bit in that. The Benz is technically [his wife] Shay’s, but I take it most of the time because she likes her Range Rover.” Nodding at a drop-top donk, he says, “That thing I got off a friend of mine, a rapper I really respect. He sold it to me. I don’t drive it much because these roads around here are rough on big wheels like that, but once or twice a year, it’s perfect when you gotta roll up to a barbecue. And this Cutlass is my newest buy. It’s totally original, and it’s mint.”
He isn’t wrong. The car has one of the tightest door slams I’ve seen from an American car of this period. Mike has always aspired to own American classics, a taste he picked up from his block, with neighbors who customized their cars and others who went drag-racing on weekends. In his shop, next to the 1971 Chevy Impala donk, sits Swiff’s 1982 Corvette T-top on Torq Thrusts and a 1966 Buick Skylark, which looks like Chip Foose could have built it for Overhaulin’.
“And there were always the Black professionals, the accountants, the engineers, the lawyers, they always had really nice big American cars. So that’s what I grew up seeing people drive. And my first car was an Eighties G-body Regal, so that’s why I’m into the Grand Nationals now. The Grand National is an outlaw’s car. All black, looks mean, like a movie outlaw, a movie villain. We always cheer for them, and they always have a cool car.”
“What is it about criminals and cars that goes together so well?” I muse.
“Don’t get it confused,” Mike says. “I said outlaws. ‘Criminal’ brings in a set of rules written by other people with their own agendas. At one time in this state, slavery was legal, and if you freed slaves, you were a criminal.”
Point taken.
“Not just that,” Mike says. “But, like, think about Prohibition: They made alcohol illegal, and you had these moonshine runners using their cars to smuggle stuff. Now those moonshine runners are American legends. Both were considered criminals, but now we respect both kinds of folks for being outlaws, antiheroes.”
It’s how NASCAR got its start.
“Exactly. Those were outlaws, but they were only criminals because of an unjust legal system. That spirit is where my brand VLNS comes from,” Mike says. “You see this shit?” he continues, pointing at one of the TVs. A chyron notes that rural voters of a certain stripe are more motivated to vote than their urban counterparts. “We got a lot of work to do on shit like this.”
I mention seeing Mike tweet about driving people to the polls. “I use that Escalade for that! It’s like a big bus. I don’t tell people who to vote for or how to vote. But making sure they have the opportunity to vote for their own future and leadership is crucial to the survival of this country and my community.”
“Did that begin once you became famous and felt like you had to speak up for people?” I ask.
“No, it came from my grandmother. I remember being five, six years old, riding around in her car, taking people to the polls. This goes way back, long before music. Music is what I love, what relaxes me. But this is who I am.” Mike doesn’t like being tied to any particular political party or movement, though you don’t end up on tour with Rage Against the Machine without raising a clenched fist at the man. “I engage with all kinds of people, and I like to have friends different from me,” Mike says. Having seen some episodes of Trigger Warning, I can’t help but agree.
“I like bringing people together, all different kinds of people. Cars do that,” Mike tells me. “No matter what you believe politically, a car can give two very different people something to relate to on a fundamental level.”
I offer Mike a go in the $170,000 Porsche Taycan GTS I borrowed for my trip to Atlanta—it’s a vehicle wholly unlike the brash Americana filling his shop. We hit the highway, and Killer Mike drives the Porsche EV, well, like one might drive a blacked-out Hellcat after midnight.
“Sometimes, if you’re in that mood and going fast helps clear your mind,” Mike says, “it’s worth taking the ticket.” The lack of noise, paired with abundant power, catches him off guard. “This thing is what you need to drive real wild and also be really polite. It’s cool. I’m into it.”
“One of these would make a great criminal’s car,” I chime in.
“You mean outlaw,” he replies.
“Exactly.”
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