Music Review: Run The Jewels (El-P x Killer Mike) Mark Harris Wednesday, July 3, 2013 The Studio Last year could have been easily considered a great year for both El-P and Killer Mike alike. After the seminal release of R.A.P. Music and Cancer 4 Cure, nothing but endless acclaim and a great tour awaited the duo. Now, they have quickly concluded that their musical relationship is in tuned to continue. Formulating a duo, El and Killer Kill from Da Ville have formed the group Run The Jewels. Their self-titled premiere album serves as a helping of their greatness in one album. On this album comes a barrage of songs with nothing but lyricism from both artists. If you paid attention to El-P’s verse on “Job Well Done”, you notice references to women soaked in ayahuasca, worker bees surrounding their queen to murder her, and his utter refusal to leave the womb “without a Yankee [hat] and some new kicks”. Right after that, Killer Mike got into story mode with full detail of a tryst turned drug addled madness on “No Come Down”. There are many more examples of these types of lyrical tirades. No need to go through them all; the words will work the ears over. In complementary fashion, the production on this album is the typical expectation from El-P: b-boy energy channeled into schizophrenic collages of sounds and celestial moods. “DDFH” could be used as a prime example. With a bevy of heavy synths, hard hitting 808 drum patterns, and warped vocal samples, “DDFH” brings the noise. The same can be said for the entire album, however. El-P does bring some production to keep the lyrics moving all the way around. Run the Jewels is a menacing, uncompromising, and eerie sounding juxtaposition of an album. The lyrics hit relentlessly hard. The production is moody and weird in one brush stroke. Then again, this was to be the expected product of this dynamic duo. In the future, one would hope that they just turn it up more notches so they can truly turn the rap game on its head.
