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| The Hired Gun, Hip Hop MC, writer, critic, arts educator |
We totally dated ourselves when we realized we knew each other since the heydays of Myspace. Yes, that Myspace. Since then we've been connected through the music and poetry circles and the occasional hot button race issue. At the Ace Hotel, on a Saturday afternoon we discovered we were neighbors in Brooklyn, kindred in the artist lifestyle.
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My name is Mikal Amin Lee AKA The Hired Gun, Fresh Roots Music, Nomadic Wax, Urban Word. I am a Hip Hop MC, artist, writer, cultural critic and arts educator. I’ve been based in New York City now for the last 13 years—born and raised in New Jersey—been reppin’ Brooklyn since 2000, officially. Unofficially, I’ve been reppin’ Brooklyn since Big Daddy Kane in 19- [muffles his voice] I’m not gonna say when cause I look very young.
As an MC and artist,
what is the message behind your music?
My influences have been people
like Chuck D, KRS-One, Brother Jay, The Native Tongues, Freestyle
Fellowship and regardless of the political message or the artistic message, the
thing that I took from them and what I try to carry on is I want you to think.
I want you to ask questions. That’s what my music is—it’s to inspire thought,
it’s to provoke thought—what’s going on with you, what’s going on with the
community around you, what’s going on with the world around you, why are things
the way they are, where do you fit in all of that. So that’s really what my
music’s about regardless of what the topic or the concept or the theme is ...
I’m not afraid to say I love Black people, so I try to celebrate us as much as
possible in my music and I try to show a different angle because I’m not what
this country or what people think are stereotypical of us so I try to represent
that as well in my music.
