Run the Jewels
RTJ4
Jewel Runners/BMG
Listen Below
Finally, a proper soundtrack for a societal upheaval.
I don’t need to tell anyone that the world is a very different place now than it was in 2019. The planet is in the throes of a global pandemic and it’s on the precipice of economic collapse. And in the past couple of weeks, at long last, the United States is facing a full-throated reckoning of police brutality and institutional racism.
After the needless and horrifically brutal deaths of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd, and the national and global protests that have followed, we’re finally at the point where the population of this country is being dragged, often kicking and screaming, into acknowledging that Black Lives Matter and that being a police officer doesn’t give you the license to kill with impunity.
All of this makes Run the Jewels’ Run the Jewels 4 one of the most timely releases that I can think of. The fourth album by the team of Michael “Killer Mike” Render and Jaime “El-P” Meline couldn’t have come at a “better” time. It’s raw, politically charged, aggressive, and confrontational. Just like the world outside today.
Both members of the group have inadvertently become hip-hop statesmen during the past five years, with Mike in particular gaining notoriety as a businessperson, activist, and media personality. Neither shrinks from this moment on RTJ4, providing words that are designed to inspire action.
It wasn’t an easy path for RTJ4 to be released. Originally RTJ envisioned putting out RTJ4 in 2019, but both circumstances and extremely busy schedules for both El-P and Killer Mike prevented the album from being completed. Towards the end of 2019, El-P stated RTJ4 would drop during the first quarter of 2020, refusing to give a specific release date.
And then, as we all know, the world came apart with the COVID-19 pandemic. By that time, RTJ had already announced that they were going to be embarking on a world tour with a reunited Rage Against the Machine. Furthermore, they’d planned to premiere new songs from RTJ4 during their set at Coachella. But the music festival was soon delayed (and subsequently cancelled), and the world tour was postponed.
Still, as the globe began sheltering in place, RTJ began teasing new songs from the album, playing them through Instagram Live. Then, on May 12th, they announced that the album was finally dropping on June 5th. But with the death of George Floyd, the United States was faced with widespread protests and uprisings in the days leading up to its planned release. Hence, the pair decided to put out the album a few days early.
RTJ4 presages the future like Fear of a Black Planet (1990) and Death Certificate (1991), but feels strikingly immediate. Even though much of the music was written in and recorded in late 2019, much of it sounds like it was recorded in the past week. Current events have given RTJ4 an increased sense of urgency, but truthfully, many of its themes would still resonate if the album were released a quarter century ago.
“Yankee and The Brave (Ep. 4)” is a fitting way to start RTJ4. Mike and El envision themselves as a pair of antiheroes starring in their own gritty ’70s/’80s television show, “smoking big Cali in a black alley / In a black Grand Natty rolling down Ol’ Natty.” For those who don’t know, the “Grand Natty” is Mike’s 1987 Buick Regal Grand National, which appears in many of the group’s promotional materials, and “Ol’ Natty” refers to Atlanta’s Old National Highway. Throughout the song, the pair regales their audience with tales of shoot-outs with crooked cops and narrow escapes down dark alleyways.
RTJ4’s production is handled by El-P, with assistance from Wilder Zoby (formerly of Chin-Chin) and Little Shalimar, who both have contributed their skills to every album in RTJ’s catalogue. Here, they’ve helped El execute a more sample-based approach than many of the other RTJ albums. Fans got their first taste of this approach with “Ooh La La,” the album’s second single. Joined by DJ Premier and Greg Nice, Mike and El demonstrated their established chemistry over a deceptively simple piano loop.
On “Out of Sight,” the “menaces to sobriety” team up with 2 Chainz to wreck a flipped sample of Foster Sylver’s “Misdemeanor,” one of the best uses of the song since The D.O.C.’s “Funky Enough.” “Ain’t no team as clean as J. Meline and Michael Render,” Killer Mike proclaims, while El-P boasts that “I’m only doing what I want while hocking loogies at the swine.”
“Holy Calamafuck” is one of RTJ4’s best entries, a two-part suite designed to make you want to smash shit. Mike begins his first verse by paying tribute to Smoothe Da Hustler and Trigga Da Gambler, emulating their clipped flow on the classic lyrical tag-team exhibition “Broken Language.” He later brags, “As a teen lacking, I woulda ran me a supreme racket / I woulda took these lames' Supreme jackets.” The song takes a darker turn in the second half, with the two navigating an almost double-time track built on threatening synths. While stoned on all sorts of mind-altering substances and wandering through different planes of reality, El-P raps, “Every other goddamned year I’m brand new / It’s been twenty plus years, you think that’s a clue?”
“Goonies Vs. E.T.” sounds like the world’s most evil b-boy anthem, with the pair spitting over neck-snapping drums and furious scratches, adding flourishes of distant horns. El has said that he originally envisioned the song with a different beat and Elton John singing the hook. Even without the Rocket Man, it’s one of the best songs on RTJ4. Mike calls out fake “woke” revolutionaries as he raps, “Ain't no revolution that's televised and digitized / You’ve been hypnotized and Twitter-ized by silly guys / Cues to the evening news, make sure you ill-advised / Got you celebrating the generators of genocide.”
RTJ continue to build on that theme with “Walking in the Snow,” which could function as an anthem for these times. The two examine a culture in the United States where basic decency has curdled into something incredibly toxic and dangerous. El focuses on the chilling effects of policies enacted by the current Presidential administration, calling out trolls and fake Christians who sit idle because they’re not the targets of these dangerous policies. “Funny fact about a cage, they're never built for just one group,” he muses. “So when that cage is done with them and you still poor, it come for you. / The newest lowest on the totem, well golly gee, you have been used / You helped to fuel the death machine that down the line will kill you too.”
Mike’s verse on the song is not only one of the best of the year, but hauntingly prescient of current events. After decrying algorithm-based education and crime fighting, he delves into the apathy that can frequently take hold in the face of great tragedy. “You so numb, you watch the cops choke out a man like me / Until my voice goes from a shriek to whisper, ‘I can't breathe,’ / And you sit there in the house on couch and watch it on TV / The most you gives a Twitter rant and call it a tragedy.” Of course, the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officers spawned quite a bit more than just Twitter rants, but I imagine Mike is satisfied to be proven wrong in this instance.
RTJ is joined by longtime friend and collaborator Zach De La Rocha, as well as Pharrell Williams on “Ju$t,” a meditation on people’s dependency on money and the corporatization of culture. If you had told me even 15 years ago that El-P, Killer Mike, De La Rocha, and Pharrell were going to appear on a song together, I would have told you to put the pipe down.
Later, El and Mike get a little personal on “Never Look Back,” reflecting on the impact that their parents and the cities of their birth had on their lives. The song features one of the most interesting beats on the album, as the pulsing, keyboard heavy groove sounds like something lifted from the Stranger Things soundtrack.
The dirge-like “Pulling the Pin” is another highlight, as both El and Mike learn to cope with the rampant corruption meted out on a daily basis, with Mike railing against those who “move like they invincible / These filthy criminals sit at the pinnacle / Doing the typical, keeping us miserable / Taking the most and providing the minimal.” Both resolve to push through with grim determination. The venerable Mavis Staples provides the soulful chorus, channeling the pain and despair that have become such an intrinsic part of life.
Not to sound cliché, but it really feels like we’re at a tipping point in global history right now. There’s a sense that right now, real change is possible. Or it could all descend into a dystopian hellscape. Run the Jewels captures these feelings of anger and uncertainty, and channels them into musical form. Like real revolution, it’s not always pretty, but its wholly satisfying and never half steps.
Notable Tracks: “Goonies vs. E.T.” | “Holy Calamafuck” | “Out of Sight” | “Walking in the Snow”
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