From Struggle Egg Sandwiches to Tuna Salad Battles — Killer Mike and El-P Talk Food, Friendship, and the Art of Survival

Tinfoil Swans Podcast

Spotify

On this episode

When Killer Mike and El-P were 10 years old, they both knew they wanted to be emcees, but it took a few decades for them to meet, form Run The Jewels, and go to war against one another over salad. The legendary rap duo joined Tinfoil Swans for a laugh-out-loud (and also cry a little) conversation about childhood meals, musical awakenings, midlife reflections, and the right way to eat a bagel. They dish on growing up on game meat and matzo brei, surviving lean years on egg sandwiches and fried fish, and building food ventures rooted in love, legacy, and community. They share a philosophical breakdown of “rich people ice,” tales of Atlanta strip club wings and sentimental steakhouses, and the kind of brotherhood that only forms over bars, beats, and deli meat.

Meet our guests

Killer Mike is a Grammy Award-winning rapper, entrepreneur, and activist based in Atlanta, Georgia. He first broke out on OutKast’s Stankonia, and later co-founded the acclaimed hip-hop duo Run the Jewels in 2013 with fellow emcee El-P. He swept three rap categories at the 66th Grammys for his 2023 solo LP Michael and channels his “compassionate capitalism” into Black-owned ventures such as Greenwood digital banking, Swag Shop barbershops, Bankhead Seafood, and Juice Runners canned cocktails. He also created the six-part Netflix docuseries Trigger Warning with Killer Mike, and the Emmy-winning PBS interview series Love & Respect With Killer Mike.

El-P is a pioneering emcee, sought-after producer, and label founder who first made his mark in underground hip-hop with Company Flow in the mid-1990s. He launched the influential Definitive Jux imprint, locking in his reputation for boundary-pushing sound design. Beyond Run The Jewels, El-P scored Josh Trank’s 2020 biopic Capone, produced Killer Mike’s 2024 single “Detonator” for Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, produces and remixes for countless artists, and partners with Killer Mike on Juice Runners.

Run The Jewels is currently on tour with Wu-Tang Clan.

Meet our host

Kat Kinsman is the executive features editor at Food & Wine, author of Hi, Anxiety: Life With a Bad Case of Nerves, host of Food & Wine’s Gold Signal Award-winning podcast Tinfoil Swans, and founder of Chefs With Issues. Previously, she was the senior food & drinks editor at Extra Crispy, editor-in-chief and editor at large at Tasting Table, and the founding editor of CNN Eatocracy. She won a 2024 IACP Award for Narrative Food Writing With Recipes and a 2020 IACP Award for Personal Essay/Memoir, and has had work included in the 2020 and 2016 editions of The Best American Food Writing.

She was nominated for a James Beard Broadcast Award in 2013, won a 2011 EPPY Award for Best Food Website with 1 million unique monthly visitors, and was a finalist in 2012 and 2013. She is a sought-after international keynote speaker and moderator on food culture and mental health in the hospitality industry, and is the former vice chair of the James Beard Journalism Committee.

Highlights from the episode

On calling their shots at an early age

“At 10, I was one year into being an emcee. I told my mother — she’s 25, smoking a joint — and I turned to her. I found rap music kind of through her, through Curtis Blow. She was a fan of the stuff that felt like it came out of disco, it was still dance music. Then I heard Fat Boys and Run-DMC. Run-DMC particularly just changed my everything. I was like, ‘I’m going to be an emcee.’ I told her, ‘Mommy, I’m going to be a rapper.’ She pulled a joint and said, ‘F*** it.'” — Killer Mike

“At 10 years old, I was writing my first rhyme. My mother found it and framed it. It says, ‘I’m Jam J, the impossible child. When I tell my tale, all the girls will go wild. I got style, grace, six school lockers. All my birthday party cakes are made by Betty Crocker.’ And Run-DMC made it feel like I could maybe be that one day. Like, maybe if I got taller, got a black denim jacket, a gold chain, and a cool hat, maybe I could kind of be that.” — El-P

On cherished childhood dishes

“I never lived with my mom except for one year when my grandma kicked me out. So I grew up in a household where we were going to the deep South and bringing foods back — sugar cane from my great-grandma’s farm, pecans from her parents’ land. My grandfather would slaughter hogs and fish. We’d work the pastor’s garden. We were probably 60/40 between food from the source and processed stuff. But it wasn’t just food — it was time. Hanging out with them, fishing, laughing. That’s what I remember most.” — Killer Mike

“My father was the cook. He had a famous pot roast — he’d put a can of Budweiser in it and let it stew. He made fried matzah, what we called it, but really it was matzo brei. When he left, it was just my mother raising me and my two sisters in Brooklyn. And she couldn’t cook — she really couldn’t. We called her Chicken Mama Baby because that’s all we ate. But there was still that Jewish deli culture — bagels, salty fish, stuffed cabbage, knishes. It’s a very New York thing. And it stayed with me.” — El-P

On “rich people ice” and “power ice”

“There is rich people ice. I go to certain restaurants just because of the ice. I don’t drink much — maybe four times a year — but when I do, and they chop off a big block from another one and drop it in your whiskey, that ice just stays with you all night. It doesn’t melt. Then I go to a regular spot, and I’m asking for ice every five minutes. I want to know what’s up with rich people ice. I need a connect.” — Killer Mike

“I used to fantasize about starting an educational ice truck in Europe. Like, an ice cream truck, but instead you’d show people how to actually use ice. Because in some places they drop one cube into a warm seltzer and call it a day. But America? We’re about power ice. We fill the whole glass and freeze everything on contact. Ice is a luxury. And it’s an art.” — El-P

On the lean years

“My wife, Shay, reminded me so much of a Southern woman like my grandma. At our poorest, she’d fancy up eggs, make a salad, split a fish sandwich so we could get through. And now we’ve opened Bankhead Seafood — a 50-year-old restaurant that working-class Black people went to on Thursdays and Fridays to feed the whole family. It’s not just about the food. It’s a sit-down place. You can bring your grandma. You can bring a date. And we charge nine bucks for a fish box. That means something.” — Killer Mike

“[After the collapse of my label, Def Jux] I had to move out of the apartment I really loved into a really small one. I had to downgrade severely. I was literally kind of subsisting off an egg sandwich a day. I wouldn’t invite people over. I didn’t want them to see me in that state. But I met my wife during that time. And I think one of the reasons I’m so deeply committed to her is because our love came when I had nothing material to offer. That time reminded me I was resilient. That I could survive. And I have no shame about it.” — El-P

On their origin story

“I flew down to Atlanta to meet Mike, and I remember the first meal we had was at a steakhouse. There’s even a picture of it somewhere. After dinner, we went out and got just hammered. I think by the end of the night we were on stage at a club. The next day, Mike picked me up and could tell I was incredibly hungover. He asked how I was feeling, and I said, ‘Well, I think I just s*** myself a little while ago.’ And he immediately burst into laughter, called his wife, and said, ‘Shay, El s*** his pants.’ That’s how we started. And somehow, it worked.” — El-P

On being control freaks

“Creating our Juice Runners Paloma was the same energy we put into releasing a song. The flavor testing is like recording vocals — going back and forth, fine-tuning. And Mike doesn’t drink, but I trust his reaction more than mine. If I love it and Mike smiles about it, I know we’re onto something. We’re control freaks. We want to do the art, the packaging, all of it. We treat it like album releases. We’re hands-on because it comes from love, and because we care about every detail.” — El-P

On investing in the community

“I put 40 grand into a bar. Max Fish was the center of our New York community — skaters, artists, firemen, musicians. It was where I met my wife. My best friends. I didn’t ask anyone if it was a smart move — I just wanted to be part of the things that held me in their embrace. That’s how I approach everything outside of music. It’s all sentimental. It’s never about money. It’s about preserving what matters.” — El-P

On the tuna salad battle

“We had a tuna salad battle early in Run the Jewels. I hit it with the eggs — Southern style. El came with cilantro, grapes, all these white-people touches. We were in Garrison, New York, all these guys stuck in a house recording, and we turned making food into a war. It was like, ‘I’m going to out-feed you.’ But it was love. It was how we were building something. It was brotherhood.” — Killer Mike

About the podcast

Food & Wine has led the conversation around food, drinks, and hospitality in America and around the world since 1978. Tinfoil Swans continues that legacy with a new series of intimate, informative, surprising, and uplifting interviews with the biggest names in the culinary industry and beyond, sharing never-before-heard stories about the successes, struggles, and fork-in-the-road moments that made these personalities who they are today.

This season, you’ll hear from icons and innovators like Roy Choi, Byron Gomez, Vikas Khanna, Romy Gill, Matthew Lillard, Ana and Lydia Castro, Laurie Woolever, Karen Akunowicz, Hawa Hassan, Dr. Arielle Johnson, Dr. Jessica B. Harris, Wylie Dufresne, Samin Nosrat, Curtis Stone, Kristen Kish, Padma Lakshmi, Ayesha Curry, Antoni Porowski, Run the Jewels, Chris Shepherd, and other special guests going deep with host Kat Kinsman on their formative experiences; the dishes and meals that made them; their joys, doubts and dreams; and what’s on the menu in the future. Tune in for a feast that’ll feed your brain and soul — and plenty of wisdom and quotable morsels to savor.

New episodes drop every Tuesday. Listen and follow on: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

These interview excerpts have been edited for clarity.

Editor’s Note: The transcript for download does not go through our standard editorial process and may contain inaccuracies and grammatical errors.