Reagan (song)
2012 single by Killer Mike
"Reagan" is a song by the American rapper Killer Mike from his fifth studio album R.A.P. Music (2012). Williams Street Records released it on vinyl as the album's fourth single on November 6, 2012, coinciding with U.S. Election Day. Produced by Jaime "El-P" Meline, it is a protest song which decries the late 40th U.S. president Ronald Reagan who served from 1981–1989. It received mostly positive reviews from critics and appeared on many year-end lists. An animated music video directed by Daniel Garcia was published on Pitchfork's YouTube channel on October 3, 2012.
Lyrical content
The song begins with a sample of a speech about the Iran–Contra affair by Ronald Reagan in which he denies trading "weapons for hostages". A snippet of his public apology for the aforementioned speech is placed after the first verse, which according to the analyst Michael Berry "highlight[s] the hypocrisy of his administration". In the first verse, Render announces that rappers should be "indicted for bullshit we inciting" due to his belief that they internalize Reaganomics despite their opposition of similar "economic and political systems" according to the analysts Erik Nielson and Travis L. Gosa.
In the second verse, Render runs through the names of every U.S. president since Reagan, equating him and "the Bushes, Clinton, and Obama" to all being "talking head[s] telling lies on teleprompters". Nielson and Gosa called this a critique of what they believe Render perceives to be a presidential neoliberal dominance since the 1980s, with Berry noting the line "strengthens Mike's claim that they are all complicit in a system of oppression".
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Reagan (song)” as 2012 single by Killer Mike. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as 2012 single by Killer Mike. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 3, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q130235246. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2012, 1981 and 1989.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Reagan (song)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.