Kill Your Masters: Run The Jewels and the World That Made Them (Music of the American South)

All the unwritten rules of rap say it doesn’t happen like this.Yet Killer Mike, a Black man from Atlanta, Georgia, and El-P, a white man from Brooklyn, New York, have transformed what should have been the twilight of their careers as rappers into their biggest spotlight yet.Known as the hip-hop duo Run The Jewels, they have headlined festivals worldwide, become action figures and Marvel comic book characters, spearheaded a worldwide countercultural movement, and played a significant role in the last two presidential elections.This is the buddy-movie-like story of how they got there.It is a tale that parallels the incredible changes the music industry has gone through over the past twenty-five years-charting a course from the highs around the turn of the century to the collapse of the CD format and the eventual rise of streaming media-while also mapping the evolution of both pop culture and its sociopolitical climate.From the surging popularity of afrofuturism and the fall of the Twin T