Killer Mike stopped by Genius to break down his song “Motherless,” from his new album MICHAEL.
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MusicTranscript
00:00 To me, this is the proper eulogy for Denise and Betty because it is the little boy on
00:04 my album cover that they poured so much into and I'm a product of their belief.
00:10 But this record will live forever and my grandmother and mother hence live forever.
00:13 My children's children's children will know that these are the women that came from.
00:17 And that means a lot to me.
00:25 When "Motherless" came about, the Michael album was finished and I thought it was perfect
00:30 and a classic and No I.D., the executive producer, he's like, you know he's got the Chicago accent,
00:35 he say, "It's good, but to be a great album, we gotta go deeper."
00:43 But what you scared of?
00:45 What you, and I say, "Man, my greatest fear I already been realized.
00:48 You know, I done lost my mama and my grandmama."
00:50 He said, "Well, that's what it's gonna be."
00:52 And I had never, my mother had been transitioned at that point about, I'd say four years.
00:56 I just remember going there and for the first time in my life saying, "My mama dead."
01:02 And you know, ain't nothing felt the same since I said that.
01:06 I honestly feel like part of this hasn't locked all the way into my memorization because it
01:16 just hurts so much to say.
01:18 You know, it hurts to say, "My mama dead.
01:20 My grandmama dead."
01:21 To keep it honest, I get depressed and be feeling scared.
01:24 I do, 'cause man, I have people depend on me.
01:27 It's hard sometimes to be weak when everybody needs you to be strong, you know.
01:33 I still talk to her as though she's there.
01:41 She's always with me.
01:42 Her and Betty always on my neck.
01:44 But understand, she's just gone in the physical realm.
01:46 And in the spiritual realm, you know, she's with my ancestors.
01:48 And in the realm of energy, her energy still resides in me and my sister.
01:51 So I can accept that.
01:52 I can live with that.
01:53 There's no way a black child born out of wedlock on the west side of Atlanta should be going
02:11 around the country affecting national and local politics in a way.
02:16 That's just not the narrative.
02:18 But I believe that's wrong.
02:19 I believe that you are absolutely capable of.
02:22 And that's what my mother poured.
02:23 So when I say, "You won't believe it, mama," I achieved it, mama.
02:27 Not that she actually wouldn't believe the shit.
02:28 She believed it before me.
02:30 But everything you said about me has come to fruition since you and my grandmother's
02:34 past.
02:35 It's almost like y'all got to heaven and start volleying for me.
02:37 Like, "Hey, check this shit out.
02:38 This kid right here, the one who's been stuck 10 years, we need to get him out of that rut.
02:42 We need to make sure his music takes his place."
02:44 And it's flowered.
02:45 You know, I say, "You won't believe it, mama."
02:47 But I've really come to realize she believed it all along.
02:49 She believed it before I did.
02:51 If God sent me back to normal to be next to you, I would gladly trade it all 'cause I'd
02:55 be missing you.
02:56 I'd be missing hugging you.
02:58 I'd miss kissing you.
02:59 I'd miss all your jewels and I'd miss all your wisdom too.
03:02 When I think of the jewels and wisdom right off the top of my head, my mother's like,
03:05 "You're going to be a man."
03:06 You know, and coming from Southern culture, you are the tip of the spear.
03:10 You are the leader of a tribe.
03:13 You are to take care of the woman that you've asked to marry or that you're involved with,
03:18 that you love.
03:19 So my mother would say, and I can't even know if I can put it all in words, "I'm raising
03:23 a man."
03:24 "Some days I be mean as fuck and I be meanin' to.
03:27 Fussin' fightin' over fuck shit that be minuscule.
03:30 Shay and Taj tell me that's just a Denise and you.
03:33 And this and both your daughters, Mikey and Anaya too."
03:36 Shay, my wife, knows me very well.
03:38 And Taj is like a sister to me and a spiritual mentor.
03:41 They're the two people I interact with in terms of when I'm angry and frustrated.
03:46 And when I say, "And this and both your daughters, Mikey and Anaya too," I'd always thought that
03:51 the temper talk would have to be with my boys, with Malik and Pony.
03:55 But my boys are cool as cucumbers.
03:56 They be chillin'.
03:57 They don't really be sweatin' much.
03:58 But my girls, Anaya Renee Render and Michael Marie Render, they're in the spirit of Denise.
04:10 So the day my grandmother died, it was on a Black History celebration.
04:14 Michael, my youngest daughter, was having an event.
04:22 And we get to our daughter's school and we're told by a guy that we can't drive up the hill.
04:27 We have to park down the hill and walk up the hill.
04:29 I know he probably regrets this to this day, but I don't hold anything against him.
04:33 We parked.
04:34 I say, "Mama, I see you.
04:35 I see you.
04:36 I want to take you up."
04:37 And he says, "No, I'll walk."
04:38 Now, this is a woman who walked one to three miles a day.
04:39 She worked in her own yard.
04:40 She never stopped moving.
04:41 So I said, "Okay, we'll walk up."
04:42 We were walking up the hill, and I had been agnostic for over ten years of my life.
04:47 And I can tell you that was the day that, eleven years ago, that I absolutely can unequivocally
04:52 tell you there's something after this life.
04:54 There's something.
04:55 There's a greater source that put us here.
04:57 My grandmother looked at me.
04:58 She looked past me and smiled.
05:00 And I could see in her eyes, I said, "She sees something."
05:02 And she looked back at me and smiled and hugged me and went limp.
05:06 I attempted to do CPR on her.
05:08 But I knew, even as I'm sitting here performing CPR on her, she's not here anymore.
05:15 Her body, I'm trying to rejuvenate, but she's gone.
05:18 And wherever she went, she went with a smile.
05:21 So as we're burying my grandmother, past that moment, my mother's going batshit crazy.
05:37 She's just going through it.
05:40 Because her mom's gone.
05:41 But I remember, I'm down and fucked up too.
05:44 She said, "My mama died."
05:47 I'm saying, "Yo, Arms, that wasn't fair."
05:49 And I'm like, "What the fuck?"
05:52 She raised me like my mama did too.
05:55 She our mama.
05:56 She said, "No."
05:57 She said, "I'm your mama.
05:59 I gave you to my mama because she couldn't have children.
06:03 You don't understand the sacrifice that took for me, Michael."
06:06 She said, "But one day you're going to understand when I die."
06:08 She said, "You're going to get it, and I'm going to be gone."
06:12 She was right.
06:13 I remember being in Europe.
06:15 Ronald Jules had been asked to stay an extra day or so to have a business meeting with
06:19 the company.
06:20 And begrudgingly, I stayed.
06:21 I didn't want to stay.
06:22 I didn't think it was the right thing to do.
06:25 My mom told me, "When you marry yourself to a job or a purpose, you have to see it through."
06:30 And I stayed.
06:33 And on the plane, I got a call, and I answered it on FaceTime.
06:37 My mom smiled.
06:38 She could hear me.
06:39 I just told her, "I love you.
06:40 I'm trying to get home to you, girl.
06:41 Just hold on, you know?
06:42 Because if you got to go, I want to be there with you."
06:43 And it just wasn't meant to be.
06:49 She died a few hours before I landed, but I carried that a long time.
06:55 Like pulling up on Sunday nights just to tell you I apologize and mama you was right.
07:01 Like a hole in my heart and I want to call the Lord, but I don't know where to start.
07:05 Yeah, Sunday nights are me and my mom's nights.
07:08 My mom would start these parties on Fridays and Saturdays.
07:10 But on Sunday nights after everybody kind of headed out, it'd usually be me and her
07:13 in the driveway.
07:14 And we'd be sitting on the top of a trunk or in the back of a pickup truck or just right
07:18 there because the driveway kind of humped over.
07:20 And we'd be looking up, especially on clear nights, and just talking.
07:22 And she'd just say, "So, Wes, what you listening to?"
07:25 She'd have actual conversations.
07:27 And after she died, my first compulsion the Sunday after death was just to pull up to
07:32 her house and just say, "Wow, the pain you told me I was going to feel, like, Denise,
07:38 God damn, I feel this shit.
07:40 And there's nobody in the world I want to talk to about it but you."
07:43 And I just remember looking up and just crying.
07:45 Just like, "Hey man, I just, oh man, I didn't know.
07:48 I just didn't know the story of Solomon was so applicable to my life."
07:56 There's a Hebrew king named Solomon who, there was two women and a baby brought before him.
08:01 And both women said, "This is my child.
08:02 I want my child."
08:03 So you see two women very passionate about this child.
08:07 And Solomon telling his advisors, "Cut the child in half."
08:10 And one of the mothers said, "No."
08:12 And he recognized in that moment that only a mother with total unconditional love, agape,
08:18 would be willing to see their child raised away from them and able to have the best possible
08:23 life but not die.
08:24 And man, that's what my mother, that's what she did for me.
08:31 She knew our mother was incapable because she had miscarriages, was incapable of having
08:35 more children.
08:36 And she knew our mother just wanted to pour everything she could into me.
08:42 Man, after she died I just understood.
08:47 "My mama dead, my grandmama dead.
08:50 I miss 'em so much sometimes I just cry and hold my head.
08:53 They left the world a man like me and makes you unprepared.
08:56 To live a life to make sure my wife ain't gone beg for bread."
08:59 My grandfather gave me the pillars in terms of verbalizing them, but my mother and grandmother
09:04 absolutely lived parts of those pillars.
09:07 "Take care of yourself and your sisters.
09:09 Don't embarrass yourself.
09:12 Don't embarrass me and your mama's name."
09:14 Meaning anywhere you're going on the west side of Atlanta, if you ask about Willie Sherwood
09:17 or Betty Clunce, you're going to hear stellar reviews.
09:20 And don't embarrass black folks.
09:22 She was a person that was like, "You're going to stand on the things that you stand on.
09:27 You're not going to ask a woman to lay down with you and she be hungry the next day."
09:32 "I got an altar in my home to honor both of them.
09:36 Just this morning I was smoking, spoke to both of them.
09:39 I asked Betty for her prayers over my generations and I asked Nisa to keep me through my trials
09:43 and tribulations."
09:44 I asked Denise to keep me through my trials and tribulations because she faced them herself
09:49 and I watched her overcome them.
09:51 And I asked Betty for her prayers over my generations because my grandmother raised
09:55 me.
09:56 My grandmother helped in part raise my nieces and nephews and even my own children.
10:00 So when I ask my grandmother for her prayers over my generations, I know she's prayed them.
10:04 She's already prayed for Michael's children.
10:06 She's already prayed for Naya's children's children.
10:08 And it's my job to make sure that as a man, I do what my grandfather did.
10:14 Bring the fucking money home.
10:28 The lesson is in what you get to be and bestow and represent.
10:31 And the curse, it just feels like that.
10:33 It's not really a curse.
10:35 You just miss, you just miss them.
10:38 I really miss Betty and Denise.
10:41 And on days when it's dark, it feels like, "Goddamn."
10:45 It'll have you asking God, "Why you forsake me?"
10:48 Even Jesus had to say, "Why have you forsaken me?"
10:51 And then have to turn around and say, "Believe it's your will."
10:54 So yeah, man.
10:55 Hell yeah.
10:56 Some days it's hard, man.
10:57 It's hard not to be able to call my mama.
10:59 I don't know how niggas feel about they mama, but it's hard not to be able to call your
11:03 grandmother and it'll have you questioning God.
11:05 And God's like, "I'm always with you.
11:07 The source that gave you to them, I'm always with you."
11:11 And my grandmother told me, "Never forget that part, that as important as I am to you,
11:16 as important as your mama is to you, that the source that sent us here."
11:19 And it just, it reaffirms my faith, no matter what church you belong to or not, that you
11:23 have a purpose.
11:25 This is not an accident.
11:26 Well, Killer Mike is a superhero.
11:31 He's Bruce Wayne with a Batman suit on.
11:35 He's a badass motherfucker.
11:36 Nobody sees the bruises except Alfred.
11:39 But Michael is just man.
11:41 He's just Denise's son.
11:42 This is Michael.
11:43 This is the pouring out of my soul, letting people know why I'm strong and defiant.