Anyone familiar with Brooklyn-based rapper Killah Priest knows his propensity for mixing urban culture with historical topics such as Alexander the Great and the Byzantines. For example, he starts one of his more famous verses by yelling, “It’s the Byzantine king!” The man literally has a lines about watching the History and Discovery channels.
One historical figure that appears often in his songs is Hannibal Barca (c. 247-183 BC), the Carthaginian general that wreaked havoc on the Italian Peninsula for more than a decade, dealing the Roman Republic some of its most crushing defeats.
Stories of Hannibal crossing the Alps with elephants has become lore over the past 2,300 years, and Killah Priest embraces these depictions.
In “Color of Murder” (2009), one of his greatest songs, he warns the listener he will
Invade your block wit elephants comin’
Like Hannibal comin’ from Carthage
But it’s more like the Priest comin’ from his projects
On a rare ((So rare, it’s not even on genius.com.)) mixtape track, “Abyssinian Sword,” he starts the whole song with
I sit back watching Discovery Channel on Hannibal
Wondering if his sword and elephant is intangible
This is one of his more aggressive, fast-paced raps full of hostile insults and physical violence. Appropriately, the image of Hannibal and his elephants kicks off the whole thing.
On the track “The God Within” from his 2009 Elizabeth album, Killah Priest briefly mentions Hannibal as one of his many tools for creating imagery.
I gave y’all parables, incomparable, unimaginable
Hannibal upon an animal, the Mazateen, the Manateniam
Millennium, equilibrium, it’s equal to lithium
Ether, either I’m eager to show you I’m deeper than any of them
His awe of Hannibal is clear, lumping the image of the Carthaginian on an elephant with other scenes he describes as “incomparable” and “unimaginable.”
Killah Priest’s most recent evocation of Hannibal is on the track “Alien Stars” from his 2015 Planet of the Gods album. Here, he mixes Hannibal with a slew of random imagery in a song where Killah Priest claims his “first nation was called the imagination.”
The land of cannibal, they mistaken me as an animal
Now mistake me as Hannibal
Thousands of elephants impaled on the fence of Heaven
This mountain shaken the gates, I’ll be a legend
He turned around, screaming “victory” to his brethren
Which turned into skeletons in seconds, he turned back
His flesh also melted in the face of the army presence
No weapon is formed
By placing Hannibal in between “cannibal” and “elephants,” there is a clear transition from the more popular use of the name with the fictitious Hannibal Lecter to the historical Hannibal Barca.
Killah Priest’s use of Hannibal for such imagery is refreshing and dates back to the Romans, who were also enamored with the Carthaginian. Given that the destruction of Carthage left us with no Carthaginian history, our only knowledge of Hannibal comes directly from the Romans. They played up his military prowess for a variety of reasons, but not least because they needed a worthy enemy to defeat.
Killah Priest keeps this tradition of the Romans alive several thousand years later.