Moments before a scheduled performance in St. Louis Monday night, Killer Mike of the rap duo Run The Jewels delivered an incredibly forceful speech about the news of a grand jury’s decision not to indict Darren Wilson, the Ferguson officer who fatally shot 18-year-old Michael Brown more than three months ago.
“Tonight, I got kicked on my ass when I listened to that prosecutor. You motherfuckers got me. I knew it was coming, I knew when Eric Holder decided to resign, I knew it wasn’t going to be good.”
“I have a twenty-year-old son and I have a twelve-year-old son and I am so afraid for them,” Killer Mike told the crowd, his voice cracked through held-back tears. “When I stood in front of my wife and I hugged her and I cried like a baby, I said ‘These motherfuckers got me today.'”
The impassioned speech ended with a powerful reference to Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights leader’s tragic death at the age of 39.
“I promise if I die when I walk off this stage tomorrow, I’m going to let you know it’s not about race, it’s not about class, it’s not about color. It is about what they killed him for: It is about poverty, it is about greed, and it is about a war machine. It is us against the motherfucking machine.”
