Run the Jewels’ bombastic fourth LP rails against police brutality, corruption, and more
After almost four years, rap duo Run the Jewels triumphantly return to the hip-hop scene with Run the Jewels 4 (RTJ4), which the duo released for free on their website June 3. Fortunately, this new full-length LP not only surpasses the already high bar set by the duo’s previous efforts, but seems primed to address the current moment in a way that few albums ever get the chance to.
Run the Jewels is Michael “Killer Mike” Render and Jamie “El-P” Meline: two established solo artists who began working together as Run the Jewels in 2013 and have been releasing music together ever since. RTJ4 blends both men’s lyrical and musical talents as the two effortlessly exchange verses and back each other on tracks with an infectious camaraderie that fans have come to know and love.
El-P, who also serves as the primary producer for the pair’s work, has continued to hone his craft since the duo’s last outing and delivers an absolutely astounding set of backing tracks. The intricately layered beats are rich with samples from throughout hip-hop’s history, and carry the album’s angry, passionate energy with a sustained intensity. These instrumentals help make RTJ4’s 11-track run an engaging rollercoaster of revolt, despair, and hope, without ever stealing the show from the duo’s lyrical prowess.
Run the Jewels’ music has always been lyrical hip-hop at its finest, and both Mike and El-P deliver some of the best verses of their careers on RTJ4. From Mike’s catchy and elaborately assonant intro verse on fist-pumping party track “Ooh La La” to El-P’s bewildered, furious indictment of Trump’s immigration policies on “Walking in the Snow,” there isn’t a single track on RTJ4 that falls flat. The album also has several inspired features, including Pharell and long-time RTJ collaborator and Rage Against the Machine frontman Zack de la Rocha, whose energetic delivery of the hook and a verse on “JU$T” help to make the song one of RTJ4’s high points.
RTJ4 also sees both Mike and El-P write more vulnerably and openly than they ever have about how they see the world. It’s not that the duo have exactly shied away from expressing their political views on past records, but RTJ4 is easily the most overtly political music the pair has produced so far. Some tracks are more light-hearted than others, but it’s difficult to find a verse on RTJ4 that doesn’t criticize the state of America in some way. Whether it’s calling out police brutality, the failures of capitalism, or sensationalist media, the music frequently feels all too appropriate for the current American moment. That this album, in which police brutality is a central theme, dropped the same week that thousands flooded the streets of cities around the world to protest the death of George Floyd is tragic and only serves to further illustrate how important the issue is.
On “Walking in the Snow,” one of the most charged tracks on the record, Mike raps in an angry verse that decries institutional racism and the numbing of the public’s sensitivity to acts of brutality: “And you so numb you watch the cops choke out a man like me / And ’til my voice goes from a shriek to whisper, ‘I can’t breathe.’” A reference to the final words of Eric Garner (another black man who was suffocated to death by police in 2014), this line parallels the final words of George Floyd in an awful coincidence that lends the album an unnerving prescience.
Thankfully, despite the record’s depressing themes, RTJ haven’t forgotten the importance of dropping banger tracks, and manage to keep a sense of humour through the darkness. Mike and El-P haven’t let the dystopian reality of Trump’s America stop them from being as crass and outrageous as ever, and still occasionally step down from the soapbox to deliver hilarious and braggadocious lines on several tracks. “You see a future where Run the Jewels ain’t the shit / Cancel my Hitler-killing trip / Turn the time machine back around a century,” raps El-P on “The Ground Below” in an absurd verse about why RTJ is still the greatest. Unlike on previous albums though, these lyrics serve to do more than just entertain, adding a needed sense of levity as the pair frequently go ***in on heavy subjects.
RTJ4 feels like the culmination of all the works that have come before it, and then some. Focused, consistent, and outrageous in all the right ways, the record delivers some of 2020’s best hip-hop so far. Between the duo’s killer production and lyricism, and the incredible timing of the album’s release, Run the Jewels have never been easier to recommend to fans of hip-hop, or anyone just looking for something to vibe to during these troubling times.
