Run the Jewels, the duo composed of famed southern rapper Killer Mike and New York backpack darling El-P, might have seemed like an unlikely pair but their past few years of collaborative music proved to have a strong place in modern music. Killer Mike has a bombastic voice and contagious swagger and confidence that sounds surprisingly natural over El-P’s futuristic and gritty production, and provides a great compliment to the El-P’s more esoteric writing style.
RTJ3 is their most recent outing (available for free download) and continues their trend of solid albums with good guest spots, terrific production, and high energy. If that’s what you love them for you won’t be disappointed. The back and forth on “Call Ticketron,” the funky guitar riff beat on “Oh Mama,” and the production of “Panther like a Panther” are the particular standouts. It’s perfect workout music which I wish I could take advantage of (I’ll get back to it, eventually), but recently I’ve found that I’m personally a little less drawn to the “rapping to prove they’re the best at rapping tracks,” no matter how brilliant the wordplay is. I already know they’re the goddamn best, and those that don’t will smell the ether soon enough.
While I can’t point to a single bad track by rap standards, there are a few hiccups. Danny Brown’s feature on “Hey Kids (Bumaye)” is a wrench in the spokes of an otherwise great ride, “Stay Gold” is a perfect example of why most songs shouldn’t have a chorus in which you spell out words, and if pressed I might admit that “Everybody Stay Calm” might bottom out a ranking list just because of how safe and forgettable it is within the context of their entire catalogue.
The variety of sounds and content has woken me up to the shift in taste and need that I approach rap music with nowadays considering the political climate and my aging, old man sensibilities. Often, RTJ projects will have a mix between braggadocious slugfests wherein the duo trades verses and flexes their lyrical muscle and slower or more politically or inwardly focused tracks like RTJ1’s “A Christmas Fucking Miracle” or RTJ2’s “Early” and “Crown.” These are the tracks that stick with me the most — and also best showcase both artists’ depth and artistry. Especially in the past year, they have also become increasingly vocal about their politics and views on community, with Killer Mike being one of Bernie Sanders’ most vocal and passionate surrogates. For this project they dropped “2100” (featuring the very talented BOOTS) as a single on the day of Trump’s victory; it is an emotionally charged and poignant track. “Thieves!” is an intricate narrative, tinged with the sci-fi dystopian brush that El-P has built his career on, that is an example of how, on this album particularly, RTJ has given El-P a little more room to show his versatility and style. “Letter to the Shareholders” provides the most succinct view of what Run the Jewels represents within music for me, and what I love them for when El-P says:
Can’t contain the disdain for y’all demons / You talk clean and bomb hospitals / So I speak with the foulest mouth possible / And I drink like a Vulcan losing all faith in the logical / I will not be confused for docile / I’m free, motherfuckers, I’m hostile
