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 arrives in a white Escalade wearing GM manufacturer plates. 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. 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. Daylight fills the warehouse.Ī former mechanic shop, this eight-bay cinder-block structure is mid-renovation. We chat about Fox-body Mustangs and his extensive collection of Sunbeams while Anthony rolls up the bay doors. He pulls a walker from the bed of his weathered Super Duty. Larry, an old-timer and lifelong mechanic, arrives. Mike is running a few minutes late, he says on a phone call, incredibly apologetic. Anthony is the events coordinator for VLNS (pronounced “villains”), Mike’s catchall brand for his many businesses outside music. I circle the neighborhood, passing factories, dollar stores, mom-and-pop chicken restaurants, and a lovely little city hall.Īt a nondescript building surrounded by chain-link fencing, Anthony greets me. Body shops, upholsterers, and mechanics with hand-lettered signs thrive this is where things get fixed. To get there, you cross literal train tracks. This is where Mike keeps a few of his cars, machines integral to his lofty goals for the surrounding neighborhood.Įast 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. 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. Instead, he’s calm and organized, a careful thinker and thoughtful speaker. The rapper, actor, entrepreneur, and activist-best known as one-half of the legendary rap duo Run the Jewels-should live a frantic life. Killer Mike is headed down many paths, uncertain where any of them will lead.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |