Killer Mike is a man of contradictions. He has campaigned for Bernie Sanders and rapped about celebrating Ronald Reagan’s death; he also supports gun ownership and speaks warmly about Georgia’s Republican governor, Brian Kemp. Years ago, he renounced the Christian faith he was raised with, but his first solo album in a decade, Michael—whose cover is a childhood photo of Mike, adorned with devil horns and a halo—is laden with gospel choirs and biblical references. “You don’t have to pick a side with me,” the 48-year-old said over Zoom, amid tokes from a joint. “You gonna go to church with me. You gonna go to the Blue Flame with me.”

That flexibility has, at times, invited controversy. Last year, a HuffPost column referred to the rapper as “more politically dangerous than Kanye West” because he’d praised Kemp’s outreach to Black constituents while the incumbent governor supported policies that Democrats say make it harder for those constituents to vote. Though many of his songs envision violent revolution, he went viral for asking protesters not to burn buildings during the George Floyd protests, leading some commentators to accuse him of playing to too many sides. The new album is partly a dispatch from our ever-exhausting culture wars over ideological purity: One groaner labels his critics’ “woke-ass shit” as “broke-ass shit.” But it is far fresher and more interesting as a memoir of a category-scrambler, a radical-by-reputation’s tribute to the “deeply southern, traditional, Black family” he told me he was raised in.  

In the early 2000s, Mike was best known as an associate of Atlanta’s signature rap duo, OutKast. The early 2010s brought a new start when he partnered with the Brooklyn emcee El-P to form Run the Jewels, whose rude and righteous anthems revived the spirit of Rage Against the Machine. After four acclaimed albums and many raucous concerts, Mike feels secure in his legacy as part of “arguably one of the best rap groups ever.” But he believes that the time has come to reassert his own story, and reconcile his somewhat fragmented image. “They see you as half superhero of Run the Jewels,” he said, referring to the public’s perception of himself. “They see you as … Killer Mike the liberal … They see you as Killer Mike the pro–Second A guy. These weird groups of people like you for different reasons. But this album gives it all to them in one, and it helps you understand I’m simply a human being.”

Fusing the sound of holy choirs with militaristic beats, volcanic bass, and Mike’s booming voice, Michael hardly represents a softening in fervor. But much of its subject matter is autobiographical and vulnerable. On various tracks, Mike raps tenderly about lost love, his mother’s death in 2017, and the fear of failure that has long propelled him. When we spoke, he teared up while talking about his late grandmother, whose devotion to Christ inspired the album’s churchly sound. At one point, he paused our conversation to kiss his wife goodbye.

Yet even while he’s focusing on the personal, politics still colors his work. The abortion debate, for example, looms in the background of the engrossing “Slummer,” which tells the story of a passionate relationship Mike had as a teenager. The girl he loved got pregnant by him, had an abortion, and started dating an older man who supported her financially in a way that Mike couldn’t. The track is a specific, and emotionally ambivalent, portrait of growing up, not a pointed editorial. But Mike said he did intend to send a message to young men: Sex comes with responsibility. “There’s a pain you can inflict on a woman … that you could be disconnected from, and she can never be,” he said, referring to abortion.

[Read: Run the Jewels’ gloriously obscene revolution]

One track on the album, “Run,” features a sermon by the comedian Dave Chappelle, who tells Mike that being Black in America is like being a soldier storming the beach at Normandy: You have to fight, whether you want to or not. Mike told me that the speech was inspired by a real conversation in which Chappelle urged him to run for governor. “Michael, people trust you, not because they think you’re perfect,” he remembers Chappelle saying. “It’s simply because you’re honest. And honest don’t mean right. It simply means ‘This is me.’” Mike demurred on running then, but felt “deeply struck with an understanding that at some point in my life, I’m going to hold some type of public office.” (He’s thinking more along the lines of city council than president.)

Chappelle, of course, is divisive for mocking transgender people at a time when their rights are broadly under siege. When I asked Mike whether he wanted to wade into controversy by featuring the comedian on his album, he steered toward the personal, describing various queer people he knew: uncles, a neighbor, a sister. “I don’t really concern myself with the national debate,” he said. “I want people to understand that this Black boy, who evolved into this Black man, has encountered every type of person possible. And that person has been an instructor or teacher of some type. And those people don’t always get along.”

I wasn’t exactly sure whether he’d answered my question, but his citation of gay friends made me wonder why the track “Talk’n That Shit” disses dudes who “hang together on some Brokeback shit.” Mike let out a surprised laugh at the mention of the line. “It’s a joke!” he said. “I’m still going to be right there next to your side, fighting for all the rights that you deserve.” The song is generally filled with trash talk, striking against partisan political hacks and marijuana-legalization policies that disproportionately benefit white businesses. “My whole thing is, listen to the whole record,” Mike said. “Take this piece of art, and see it as a piece of art.”

He went on to spin a metaphor about cancel culture. “America today is functioning as a broken, white, middle-class family,” Mike said. “I remember having friends [say,] ‘I don’t talk to my mother and father. They voted for someone [I disagree with].’ I don’t understand that. Culturally, it doesn’t work like that where I’m from.” Avoiding conflict and debate is “a privilege I don’t have, because Black folks got to be together in some capacity.”

To hear him tell it, that mentality explains why he has affiliated with figures such as Kemp, whom Mike said he connects with as a southern father, businessperson, and gun owner. Mike said he once met with the Georgia governor’s team to lobby against enhanced sentencing for gang members—an unsuccessful effort he still found to be worthwhile. “We tried our best; we didn’t get it, but that’s how politics goes,” he said. “I would encourage more people to seek those uncomfortable relationships … rather than find off-the-rack friendships simply based on you and one person agreeing on one thing.”

Though such crossing of party lines runs afoul of the “woke-ass” crowd he dismisses on the album, Mike told me he does buy into some idea of wokeness—just not the kind that’s a synonym for liberal. Taking stock of Mike’s life and times in clashing complexity, Michael represents an older reading of the term, more along the lines of what Nas rapped about in “N.Y. State of Mind,” which Mike quoted to me: “‘I never sleep, ’cause sleep is the cousin of death.’” Mike’s message is to “stay awake,” he said. “Because if all of us are paying attention, then all of us could see the details, and we can get in the room to figure out how to overthrow all of our masters.”