If you ask Killer Mike how to truly make love work, he’ll tell you it involves brutal honesty… and firearms. During a recent visit to the Club Shay Shay podcast (via Complex), the Run the Jewels rapper delighted host Shannon Sharpe with a story that happened sometime before he married his wife, Shana Render, with whom he shares four children.
At the time, Mike found himself “smitten” with an exotic dancer, and was hanging out with her when the future Mrs. Shana Render showed up with a (seemingly loaded) handgun. However, the incident began a little more innocuously (and perhaps lighthearted, even?)
“I got a call. ‘Hey, man. Maybe you should come back, man. We should run around, too,’” Mike remembered. “I was like, ‘Well, I am trying to get some cardio in [to] lose weight.’”
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Unfortunately, that little joke clearly didn’t work out in the MC’s favor. “I got a call when I got in the door. ‘Say, man, [if you don’t] bring your ass out that girl house right now? I’m going to kill both of y’all,’” Mike said. “I said, ‘What, man? Get out of here. Stop playing, man. I ain’t even over there, man. You just seen my truck.’”
When Mike finally did take the caller seriously, it was a huge wake-up call. “My wife had my gun in that driveway, pointing at me. I was like, ‘OK, damn,’” Mike recalled. “I was like Henry in Goodfellas, I woke up like ‘Aye.’ I got in that truck, man. She said, ‘I ain’t never seen your fat ass run so fast in my life.’ Being monogamous got a lot easier after that.”
As if that wasn’t enough, Shana then drove her future hubby to the home of his Aunt Deborah, who responded so aggressively that Mike said he “would’ve rather got shot.” As one would expect, things did improve for the lovebirds after the incident.
“After that, the rules changed. After that, I was just like, ‘Man, I like you, but you just got to holla at her,’” Mike said regarding his conversation with the dancer. “‘If you can convince her that we like each other enough and you ain’t no problem, man, I love to do a twirl in the wind with you, man. But I don’t want to get shot and I don’t want my Auntie Deborah to feel like that again.’”
So, what are the lessons and/or takeaways from Killer Mike’s escapades? Well, infidelity in general will always make you pay, one way or another. But if you are going to mess around, maybe avoid dancers that your then-girlfriend might already be aware of and even actively distrusts or dislikes.
From there, maybe consider the kind of person you are with — perhaps you want someone willing to go to extremes to make your love work. (Or, inversely, if you can’t stand the heat, stay out of that matrimonial kitchen.) And above all else, if you are confronted with a drawn weapon, do your best to simply learn anything at all from the experience.
Check out the full episode below. The sordid story begins around the 22-minute mark.
Elsewhere in the interview, Mike talks about Nicki Minaj, Future, and former tourmate Dave Chappelle. He also issues an apology to Steph and Ayesha Curry over a skit besmirching the NBA star’s wife.