Apparently Killer Mike Really Does Have His Own Religion

Killer Mike is full of big ideas. On his wild new Netflix show Trigger Warning With Killer Mike, the rapper-turned-public personality goes to extreme lengths to shed light on systemic issues, often leading him to off-the-wall solutions, from creating educational porn to founding a sovereign nation within the US. The episodes escalate absurdly quickly, making it hard to tell what’s real and what might be pseudo-scripted reality TV. But one of his most memorable escapades—when he starts a new religion—is apparently based on his actual, one-of-a-kind religious practices, according to a Friday BET interview.

In the episode “New Jesus,” Killer Mike is frustrated that black Christian communities are taught to worship a white Jesus. So he starts the “Church of Sleep,” centered on the radical prospect of black people finally getting to rest, as his makeshift congregation naps, reflects, and writes their own scripture. But of course, like all Killer Mike ideas, he kicks it up a notch by the end, holding a sermon in his favorite strip club, where women pole-dance while a gospel choir sings and his parishioners pass around joints.

While that particular congregation only came together for the show, Killer Mike based the Church of Sleep on his own breed of worship. After being skeptical of organized religion since he was a kid and studying religious philosophy more seriously in college, he’s invented his own rituals and prayer processes.

“I pray at an altar within my home; give gratitude to my ancestors, they're the ones that got me here. Then I do official things within that prayer,” he told BET. “I wake up and do my positive affirmations, and thank the Gods within me, and the Gods I see existing outside of me everyday.”

That goes for his children, too.

“I encourage my children to worship God within them and we take time specifically to do that," he said.”

He told BET he has a personal prayer room in his house “filled with all women figures of divinity,” including shrines to his mother and grandmother—then, because this is Killer Mike we're talking about, checked himself before things got too serious.

“I go to the strip club with my wife as often as possible," he added.

He went on to tell BET, in a surprisingly gorgeous little tangent, that he believes right before young children are taught about organized religion, they’re the most in tune with personal spirituality.

“You’re already in tune with God [before about four years old]. You’re already talking to the air. No one knows who you are talking to," he said. "You’re walking out into the grass, so that’s appreciating God to me."

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