Music

Big Boi and Killer Mike are putting out a joint EP

by Richard Howard

OutKast’s Big Boi and Run The Jewels’ Killer Mike have a long history of doing dope shit together. Long before finding mainstream success with El-P in RTJ, Killer Mike debuted on the 2000 OutKast track “Snappin’ & Trappin’” and was featured the next year on the group’s Grammy-winning cut “The Whole World.” OutKast (and Big Boi alone) went on to feature on early Killer Mike solo tracks like “AKshon (yeah!)” and “A.D.I.D.A.S.”

For a while, though, it looked like the winning combo was a thing of the past after Killer Mike and Big Boi fell out over business concerns in 2006. It took them a few years, but the two managed to patch things up and have long talked about putting an official collaborative project. A planned album along with fellow Atlanta rapper Pill never materialized, but the two have worked together since with Big Boi appearing on the RTJ track “Banana Clipper” and the popular duo doing the same on a tune from the Big Boi/Phantogram EP Big Grams. Finally, according to Big Boi, he and Killer Mike are putting together a proper, full-on collaborative EP.

“Me and Killer Mike, we’re gonna put out a little EP after I put out my next solo record or something like that,” said Big Boi to Spin. “We’ve been entertaining the idea for a long time and finally got enough songs to where we just said the other night that we’re gonna do it.”

While Killer Mike’s slightly more open calendar could partly be attributed to the bummer of Bernie Sanders (who he campaigned for extensively) failing to secure the Democratic presidential nomination, this could be considered the silver lining; there’s absolutely no way this collab won’t result in serious fire.

Check out their most recent track together — the trippy-ass “Born To Run” taken from the Big Grams EP — and get stoked.