Run The Jewels wasn’t an obvious combination. On one hand, you had a ginger-haired, Brooklyn-born paranoiac making beats on stolen Area 51 hardware and rapping as if Philip K. Dick were alive to see the towers fall. On the other hand, a member of Atlanta’s storied Dungeon Family, issuing socio-political sermons and candy-painted flex raps that settled on resplendent Southern grooves and trunk-rattling trap beats like thick weed smoke. But when the needle drops on “Big Beast,” the first track on Killer Mike’s 2012 album R.A.P. Music, it’s clear this artistic partnership was meant to be. From the first second, Mike raps with neck-straining intensity over syncopated orchestra stabs that sound straight out of a 1986 Clairtone 7890 boombox. Depth charge kicks and 32nd note hi-hats explode like a hydrant wrenched open on a baking summer street. Mike’s round, long-voweled Atlanta drawl sits perfectly in the metallic East Coast bombast. Though well established by this time, there was a new fire in his belly — it seems as though he’d been waiting his entire life to rap on this beat. By the time they released their eponymous debut project a year later, the world realized that it had been waiting for Run The Jewels.
Despite growing up some 875 miles apart, both were raised on Public Enemy and N.W.A., finding solace and inspiration in the Bomb Squad’s clattering noise and Ice Cube’s righteous anger. El-P was a titan of the ’90s and ‘00s New York scene, and his first group, Company Flow, became the Velvet Underground of indie rap — with their initial EP, Funcrusher, inspiring everyone who heard it to either pick up a mic or a sampler. Funcrusher Plus, their proper full-length debut, sold between 100,000 and 200,000 copies, and is widely regarded as one of the most influential rap albums of the ‘90s. As CoFlow dissolved near the end of the decade, El started Def Jux (formally known as Definitive Jux after a Def Jam filed suit), which established a claustrophobic, dusty-but-digital sound defined by classic records like Cannibal Ox’s The Cold Vein and El’s solo debut, Fantastic Damage.
Killer Mike entered the Atlanta rap landscape in 1995, meeting Big Boi of OutKast and production team The Beat Bullies while they all attended Morehouse College. Seven years later, he was close to a household name thanks to a career-kickstarting verse on Outkast’s Grammy-winning single “The Whole World.” From there, he became a self-sustaining force of Southern hip-hop, dropping fiery LPs like 2006’s I Pledge Allegiance To The Grind, 2008’s I Pledge Allegiance to the Grind II, and 2011’s PL3DGE.
Click the photo above to check out Okayplayer’s exclusive merch collab with Run the Jewels.
Photo illustration by Okayplayer.
With raps as dexterous as they were impassioned — and messages that could be as regional as they were universal — Killer Mike and El-P were on a creative collision course years before Adult Swim’s Jason DeMarco introduced them in 2011. He recognized that both artists felt most comfortable on towering, thunderous beats, but more importantly, understood how to corral the chaos with a commanding voice. Instinct told him they would make interesting work together. He was right. In each other, Mike and El found kindred spirits, their energies so complementary that sessions meant to produce a single or two resulted in R.A.P. Music, a Killer Mike solo album helmed entirely by El. It was a loud, brash, bracingly political slab that was unlike anything either had done. As the project wrapped, El channeled that inspiration into finishing Cancer4Cure, which, of course, Mike showed up on. Recognizing their potent creative power, the duo kept the momentum going, firing off a quick mixtape of free-associative s**t talk over El’s production. They called it Run The Jewels, ripping the phrase from LL Cool J’s “Cheesy Rat Blues” as a nod to the ‘80s slang they grew up with. In June 2013, they unceremoniously posted it as a free download and continued plotting other projects.
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It sent them into the stratosphere. To be clear, Run The Jewels never felt tossed off, even in the face of its swift assembly and brisk rollout. It’s a massive, stadium-ready record from, at this point, two veterans of the game. El toned down some of his noisier predilections, turned up the pavement-cracking bass, and he and Mike deepened their chemistry, channeling classic rap duos like EPMD and 8ball & MJG. They hit the road together to promote R.A.P. Music and Cancer4Cure, and would reconvene after both sets to do some of the Run The Jewels songs. The audience responded best to the RTJ jams, and they realized they’d tapped into something new. Something bigger. After lengthy, successful careers in their respective silos, together, Mike and El-P found a sound that transcended geographical and generational divides.
For the past 12 years, RTJ has been on an absolute tear. In 2014, the duo dropped RTJ2, a more focused, well-considered record that somehow turned everything up a few levels. The songs were louder, heavier, explicitly designed to open pits and shake floors in bigger venues. Their braggadocio was more refined, placing their political screeds alongside elevated dick jokes. The inventiveness was just as rewarding as the execution. “Oh My Darling Don’t Cry” sounds like Lil Wayne’s “A Milli” slathered in psilocybin, which proved that El was still brilliantly innovating his cyborg funk style. Tours became festival appearances, stages and room capacities grew, and El-P and Killer Mike were in the midst of a legitimate, awe-inspiring second act.
Then they returned with RTJ3, a solemn, angry record that scans as a response to Donald Trump’s campaign and subsequent (first) election. RTJ3 was a much moodier affair, with a higher focus on complex arrangements over chest-caving volume. To promote it, they embarked on the “Run The World Tour,” enlisting acts like Denzel Curry, Danny Brown, and Gangsta Boo, criss-crossing Europe and North America for most of 2017.
The duo took four years to craft their follow-up, and when RTJ4 hit DSPs in June 2020, the world felt like it had become the one they’d been warning us about. It was less somber and more fiery than 3, an apt soundtrack for a global pandemic and raging protests against police violence. El’s beats sounded like the crackle of a burning precinct, and both rappers spat vitriol at homegrown tyranny. They appeared at Chicago’s Riot Fest in 2021, but mostly laid low until the following year, when they toured with a reunited Rage Against the Machine. This past June and July, they served as direct support for Wu-Tang Clan’s final tour — a fitting match for a crew also defined by pulsating energy and world-building eclecticism.
It’s been five years since their last dispatch, but Run The Jewels remains a potent emblem of the zeitgeist. Their records are bloodshot “I told you so” missives that could soundtrack a revolution. In many ways, they already have. Racing between themes, emotions, and sounds, Killer Mike and El-P have been pacing a marathon. Take a look at the news and sift through any of their four albums to see why they still run it.
Click the photo above to check out Okayplayer’s exclusive merch collab with Run the Jewels. Photo illustration by Okayplayer.From Your Site Articles
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