Clik here to view.
It's been nearly a week since Michael “Killer Mike” Render and Jaime “El-P” Meline, or Run The Jewels, leaked their sophomore album, Run The Jewels 2, and I feel like I've just begun my lovingly fucked- up honeymoon with this thing.
Its monstrous, mechanized production keeps beating my attention into bloody fun submission. Its hilariously absurd lines make my inner-10-year-old giggle like the first time I saw Airplane! And, when it does get serious, it hits with a compassion so striking, I feel genuinely moved after some of these tracks end.
Mike and El have been around their respective blocks a few times — Mike cruising a mildly mainstream wave of Southern rap under the co-sign of fellow ATLiens Outkast; El god-fathering underground NYC hip hop with Company Flow, Def Jux records, and an under-the-radar solo career. At 39, both have reached an age when the cement of life tends to dry, when artistic inventiveness comes at the risk of not just losing a fanbase but the roof over your head. Yet, here they are with this matrix glitch of an album that’s more skillful, interesting and frankly, fun than those of emcees half their age and twice as famous.
The album shoots off with the slow burn of “Jeopardy” Mike laying out a viciously intricate, we’re-not-to-be-fucked-with rhyme before El humbly castrates the opposition with stabs like “I live to spit on your grave, my existence is to disgrace you / The kitten became a lion that look at your face like great food.”
If “Jeopardy” was the car, “Oh My Darling Don’t Cry” is the transformer it grows into. Powered by a pants-shittingly bassed-out beat fraught with oscillating Martian blips, “Darling” is an instant classic if only for El-P’s opening line: “You can all run naked backwards through a field of dicks.”“Blockbuster Night Pt. 1” is drunken sway of a banger that only leaves you wanting more after it’s 2.5-minute run-time.
Zack De La Rocha, former Rage Against the Machine frontman-turned-where-the-hell-did-he-go-recluse, is quite the get, and the Jewels make the most of his poison-dart delivery on “Close Your Eyes (And Count to F*ck).” It’s sad this guy gets relegated to the forgotten corner of late '90s rap rock, because he slayed, and still slays, with a politically-tinged verse that makes it feel like he never left.
“Love Again” is vulgar ode to the opposite sex with a chorus so simultaneously stupid and memorable, it might be genius. With a guest verse from Akinyele, this thing takes surprising left turn into female sexuality that gives both dudes a run for their money.
For all its absurdity, RTJ 2 features some very vulnerable and risky moments. “Crown” finds Mike reliving his coke-dealing past but without the nihilistic braggadocio you might expect — quite the opposite, in fact. This is an inner-battle of guilt and redemption, gut-wrenching at worst, somber at best, and a hell of a verse because of it. El follows with a poignant take-down on blind faith in the military industrial complex that’s just as poetic as it is convincing. “Early” starts uptempo, but quickly turns into a first-person account of police brutality and its lingering effects on both emcees.
Politics rear their ugly head everywhere on this thing, but a political record it is not. There's something bigger at play here. Run The Jewels 2 is the byproduct of two long and relentless pursuits of a passion. It is enlightenment in a suspicious package of potent raps. It is 100 percent in a class of its own, and its greatness is simply undeniable.
CRITICS' RATING: 4.5 out of 5 stars
Download the album for free RIGHT HERE.
