Download: El-P & Killer Mike, ”˜Run The Jewels’

Andrew Veeder on
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Brooklyn’s El-P and Atlanta’s Killer Mike have collaborated with each other before – Mike guested on a track from El-P’s 2012 album “Cure 4 Cancer,” and EL-P produced the entirety of Mike’s 2012 album “R.A.P. Music” (as well as rapping on a track). They also toured the country together last summer with Mr. Muthaf*ckin’ eXquire and Despot, rocking the Echoplex en route, and then played together around the world. For their next trick, this unlikely dynamic duo has a new project titled Run The Jewels and is offering a self-titled album for free download. Once again entirely produced by El-P, “Run The Jewels” is crafted with his signature grimy underground synth textures and buzzy booming beats, dense but lighter and more fun than “Cure 4 Cancer” was. The real fun is listening to El and Mike just throw down and trade off flows with playful ease, sometimes even within the same verse. On “Job Well Done” (featuring scratches from Killer Mike’s tour cohort Trackstar the DJ), Mike spits, “Every word murderful / Surgical, painful, purposeful / And I take it left off you f*ck list personal / Woo, they done let that f*ckin’ Mike out / It’s like Tyson in the ’80s, n*gga snap and punch your lights out / It’s like Tyson in the ’90s, if I’m losing take a bite out,” and on the next verse, El boasts, “Women dosed with ayahuasca drum circle and sing about us / Dolphins prone to rape’ll hear the tape and start to think about it / Monks won’t immolate themselves until the record hits the shelves / Yetis walk right out the woods to cop it without thinkin’ bout it.” With 10 songs clocking in at just under 33 minutes, it has a feel somewhere between a mixtape and album, free-flowing but tight, and the only guest featured is Big Boi on the track “Banana Clipper.” “Watch The Throne” should keep an eye out, because this tag-team could creep up and mob on ’em; and hey, Run The Jewels does have two really solid rappers, something the Throne can’t necessarily claim.

||| Download: “Run The Jewels” here.

||| Stream: “Run The Jewels,” “Banana Clipper feat. Big Boi” and “Job Well Done”

||| Live: El-P & Killer Mike as Run The Jewels with Despot and Kool A.D. rock the Echoplex again on August 1.