Run the Jewels - Run the Jewels 2 (2014)
God, where to start? The night this dropped, I (and seemingly a lot of people) weren't impressed or generally entertained by it for whatever reason that's honestly beyond me. Tons of people were complaining, and so did I, but my girlfriend was all "No, it's great!" and said some other stuff that I kinda tuned out because the .gif of a dude shooting a bullet into water in slo-mo had loaded and I needed to check out what the fuck was going on. When I came back to my senses, I must've said something to the effect of "Yeah, I'll check it out again I guess" and much like everyone else, by the next day, the album was beating my ass relentlessly, much like how Killer Mike SCREAMS for the intro of the album: "I'M GONNA BANG THIS BITCH THE FUCK OUT! You better -- You might wanna record the other way! You finna look at history being made! This muthafucka put a mirror on the Goddamn screen! Let's go, El-P! Huh? Champ! So what we gonna do Mick?" leading into a distinctively non-hype opening track which has a great strength of doing just that: Underwhelming you. You start to listen to the background of the track, all the little details, and it's very well-detailed but doesn't really do much for you aside from some brag-raps from Killer Mike and El-P, but then..
A loud, bassy beat kicks in after some vocal manipulation, because "Oh My Darling Don't Cry" just kicked in with El-P stating "FUCK THE WORLD, THEY CAN EAT MY DICK, THAT'S WORD TO PIMP!" and then it becomes apparent: The natural musical chemistry between El-P and Killer Mike has improved IMMENSELY since the last album, with it no longer feeling like a simple collaboration, but rather a super-duo who're here to unleash some fucking ignorant (although occasionally sneaking in a thought-provoking track here and there) aggressive shit to make you want to fight your step-dad. "Blockbuster Night Part 1" and "Close Your Eyes (And Count to Fuck) (Feat. Zack De La Rocha)" follow soon after, and DAMN: El-P's production has improved to be so much more colorful and varied than the last album! I mean, "Blockbuster Night Part 1" kinda sounds like robots fucking and "Close Your Eyes (And Count to Fuck) (Feat. Zack De La Rocha)" has a beat of Zack De La Rocha (frontman for Rage Against the Machine) saying "RUN THEM JEWELS FAST" before getting CHOPPED THE FUCK UP like bodies in Uncle Bob's shed!! I'M TRYING TO STRESS THAT THESE ARE ALL GOOD TRACKS SO PLEASE NOD APPROVINGLY AT YOUR COMPUTER!!!
This album doesn't ever really let up. The production is pretty great throughout, with "Lie, Cheat, Steal" featuring a beat that just EXPLODES in color and is trippy in its own way, and there's even a track featuring a particular drummer I'm quite fond of ("All Due Respect (Feat. Travis Barker)") to really hype shit up, but one of the greatest things that Run the Jewels harnesses this time around is the ability to take a step back, chill things a bit and talk about actual serious shit: Police brutality, feeling remorse over selling drugs to a pregnant woman, and the mind of a soldier brainwashed by the military are all explored in an effort to bring a type of statement to their music in between hilarious lines and beats that bang in the whip. Sure, some of the hilarity and extreme lines lose a bit of flavor and lasting substance as you'll undoubtedly listen over and over again, but El-P saying "You can run naked backwards through a field of dicks" and "I’ll tea bag a piranha tank, heart barely beatin'" will always be funny. Fight me.
Perhaps the most interesting moment comes in the form of "Early (Feat. Boots)" in which Killer Mike and El-P open both of their verses with the same lines ("It be feelin' like the life that I’m livin', man, out of control, like every day I’m in a fight for my soul") and then Killer Mike proceeds to tell a story of police brutality with him as the protagonist, eventually being forced to watch his wife's life being ended -early- by being executed by a police officer while he's (Killer Mike) is being taken away in a police car, and then later on, in El-P's verse, he raps from the perspective of a police officer who is perhaps frightened and numbed by the very system he's found himself working for, with the ending of his verse noting "Heard it go pop, might have been two blocks, heard a kid plus pops watched cop make girl bleed. Go to home, go to sleep, up again -early-." brilliantly connecting Killer Mike and El-P's stories in the way that not only do their stories connect, but the fact that the word "early" is pretty much used to describe someone's life being ended suddenly, and also noting that El-P's character is so desensitized that he'll just wake up tomorrow like nothing ever happened. This is all complimented by a fucking great chorus by Boots that gives off the feeling of drowning (via his voice being intentionally drowned in the production) while attempting to reach out above the surface for help, which El-P's and Killer Mike's characters both need badly. It's one of the most thought-provoking serious songs I've heard because this shit is happening every fucking day! Without getting too much into that, it's just a brilliant concept to explore musically.
With this album, you get a lot of what you want, no matter what kind of hip-hop fan you are: You've got the bangers, you've got the serious songs, you've got the hilarious boasts and brags, you've got the thought-provoking social statements, and ultimately at the end of it all, with that all combined, you have possibly the best hip-hop duo around right now that has formed in the past ten or so years. When you listen to this album, and I mean really -listen- to it, down to the lyrics, the intricate details in the immense production, and manage to take everything in as they're hoping you will, you'll likely walk away from this album viewing it as what it is: A fucking great album that may not go down as one of the best hip-hop albums ever created, but nonetheless, a very important album for this day and age, able to appeal to the mainstream and the underground, the fans who like funny punchlines and the fans who like conscious-rap, and also for the Marvel fan, because we all know you needed a proper hip-hop album (read: not nerdcore) that bangs in the whip.
"That's why we got the people behind us
While other rappers are vaginas for the fame, the jewel runners will always stay rude
Motherfuck your permission, was never yours to begin with
And every bar of the bitch shit you spit is your fucking prison
I been here making raw shit and never asked to be lauded
Run the Jewels is the answer, your question is "what's poppin'?""
8/10
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Feel free to check out the song previews/buy this album using my Amazon Associate link!
