Run The Jewels

Right now, Run The Jewels are on top of the world. Their latest album, 2014’s RTJ2, is yet another hit in a string of successes, both critically and commercially, that have seen the rap duo become one of the toast of the hip-hop community.

But things have not always been this way. The tale of how these two struggling, middle aged, down on their luck, underdog MCs rose to the top could have been plucked straight out of Hollywood.

Our story starts in the dark old days of 2009, and the future members of Run The Jewels have yet to meet.

34 year old Michael Render, better known by his stage name Killer Mike, had been in the rap game for a whole decade by this point. Killer Mike had debuted strong; his first album appearance being with rap royalty Outkast, and other high profile collaborations were still to come, including a spot on Jay-Zs 2001 album The Blueprint 2.

His debut album sold well, with the first single featuringon NFL 2004, and his second single worked its way up to #60 on the billboard top 100. Further success was still to come, when Mike scored his only top 40 hit featuring alongside Bone Crusher on the hit ‘Never Scared’.

But the mid-noughties were not an easy time to be a musical artist, and certainly not for such a politically charged voice as Killer Mikes. His subsequent albums scored well with the critics, who applauded his “conscious desire to knock some sense into you” and robust technical proficiency, but sales dwindled and prospects looked grim.

 "I was disappointed because I felt like I had spent a career working to still be viewed as a protégé. So I said, 'Fuck this shit. I'm gonna join the church.'"

Likewise; producer, rapper and entrepreneur Jaime Meline was the toast of the underground rap scene, but had also fallen on hard times by 2009.

Jaime started young in music, forming record label Company Flow with a friend soon after his 18^th birthday and operating under the pseudonym El-Producto.

For the next 2 decades El-P (as he’s known these days) would be a major force in alternative hip-hop. As CEO of Definitive Jux, El-P created a home for many small but gifted acts, including RJD2 and Aesop Rock. And, as an artist, Jaime released a number of albums that came out to rave reviews. El-P’s rapping style is dense, witty and aggressive. His production is bleak, paranoid and claustrophobic. But even a much lauded Pitchfork-best-music review was not enough to bring significant album sales, and Definitive Jux was eventually put on hiatus in 2010.

Our dynamic duo were first brought together by, of all people, the creative director of Adult Swim. Jason DeMarco had only recently set-up Williams Street Records to distribute the music that accompanies the irreverent, cult adult cartoons Adult Swim produces.

DeMarco knew Killer Mike from his voice work on Frisky Dingo and The Boondocks, and would later meet El-P as his new record label produced the video for El-Ps ‘Flyentology’.

It was DeMarco’s idea to introduce the two, and so on one fateful day in a studio in Atlanta, the forces that would become Run The Jewels met for the first time, and the rest is, as they say, history.

Their first collaboration was on Killer Mikes 2012 solo L.P ‘R.A.P Music’, which El-P both produced and featured on. From its opening moments, R.A.P Music made it clear that this collaboration was a meeting of equals, as a slinky, shuffling, shimmering electronic beat introduces Killer Mikes explosive preaching.

The album itself is a politically charged look back on Killer Mikes relationship with rap music. On one hand, Mike lays into other rappers habit of “inciting bullshit” and encouraging wasteful violence, but at the same time the album is riddled with nods to the seminal works of the genre.

For the title track and album closer, El-P provides an almighty beat for Mike to spit over. The result is a powerful and heartfelt stomp through the history of ‘Rebellious African People’ and, in my opinion, the best track of 2012.

Elsewhere, the paranoid and creeping sound that El-P has spent his career perfecting provide the backdrop for some of Killer Mikes finest storytelling, as the M.C leads us through the seedy history of theReagan government and the story of an illegal house raid gone awry.

For a victory lap, merely months after R.A.P Music’s release, the duo struck again with the free mixtape Run The Jewels. The mixtape displayed two pros kicking back and enjoying themselves.

The shit-talking abounds, and the pair uses their talents to kick out track-after-track of fist banging anthems and instantly enjoyable songs. There is still the trademark dystopian vibe to the overall sound, but now the gleefully outlandish threats and wide grinning jokes give the whole project an infectiously entertaining aura, as if the record would feel most at home blasting from a boombox on a street corner.

It was on this mixtape, too, that the pair’s personalities would first begin to converge and the chemistry of Jaime and Mike would begin to take solid form.

But nothing, nothing at all so far, could prepare the world for how fucking good 2014s Run The Jewels 2 is.

There is not a single dull moment on RTJ2. It’s one of the flat out tightest records I’ve ever heard, and it’s the sound of seasoned veterans being utterly ambitious. Over its 40 minute run time both MCs spit verse after verse of solid rhymes and the album is, from start to finish, sonically outstanding.

The dynamic is fantastic, as Run The Jewels continue with their M.O to utterly destroy the “fuckboys”; the bullshit spouting people who make the world a worse place.

Killer Mike departs from his usual style of weaving political awareness into narratives and instead goes full on wrecking ball mode, using his booming voice to call out the injustices of racism and other inequalities.

At the same time, El-P ducks and weaves with his lyrical punches, an outraged witness out for blood.

RTJ2 is a rare beast: an album balanced between being entertaining and genuinely funny, but at the same time sincere and profound.

It’s a destructive force of righteous anger, a middle finger to the system, and an absolute fucking blast.

"Run The Jewels is the answer. The question’s what’s popping."