Run the Jewels - Meow the Jewels (2015)
You ever say something about something you should supposedly do, and then someone holds it to you? You know, when you make a half-assed promise on New Years Eve to participate more with the community in the form of helping homeless people and all that shit. Now, imagine if you said some REALLY stupid shit instead, and instead of just one person holding it to you, you had an entire fanbase, and that's pretty much what caused this album: "Run the Jewels 2" with all of its instrumentals replaced by cat sounds. Pretty much every sound on this album is of a cat meowing or purring, I'm not sure if some of the snares are some heavily shifted cat samples or not, but you get the point. The day it was announced that this album was coming out, the internet rejoiced: We were getting something so fucking ridiculous that we didn't think we were actually gonna get, and major props to El-P, Killer Mike, and all of the producers that were involved in this project, but all that meows is not gold.
I don't mean to potentially sound prejudiced against any cats that might be reading this, I didn't vote to build a wall keeping cats out of the country or anything, but I don't really think cats can make a good album. I was hoping this album would feature the beats from the original album entirely recreated using cat noises instead of their original samples, but since most of the beats here are pretty new (the hectic samples of "Close Your Eyes (And Count to Fuck)", for example, are replaced with low purrs) and sometimes I wouldn't even know it was a sample of a cat if I wasn't told, aside from the occasional high-pitched meow in the background. It's a fun little novelty album, I definitely have to give it that, but how many times are you realistically gonna listen to it? I've listened to it a few times and I feel like I've gotten all enjoyment I'm ever going to get out of it after just one listen! However, it is a funny album, and a great novelty album to show people, so it isn't shit, but it isn't exactly the cat's meow. That's where Rolling Stone or Pitchfork would've ended the review, but I'm not pretentious like them, so FUCK YOU
6/10
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