Andrew Veeder on August 9th, 2013

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As I approached the Echoplex on Thursday, Aug. 1, for the Run The Jewels tour, I worried that the quiet and sparsely populated exterior and smoking patio might be a sign of a sparsely populated show to follow. No so. Even for the first act, the crowd was already stacked past the sound booth.

Kool AD, formerly of the now-defunct Das Racist, kicked things off in an Oakland A’s lid and plump black beard. “If you get bored, put your lighters in the air,” he joked between songs of a set I found myself simultaneously nodding my head to and laughing out loud at. His lyrics are smart and clever, really hitting with lines like, “After the party it’s the afterparty / the revolution probably won’t be sponsored by Bacardi / Be gnarly, Gs sounding like lasagna when I puff the Bob Marley,” from the track “Dum Diary.”

• ||| Photos by Zimo Huang

Next up was Despot, a Queens-bred redhead still without a proper debut album after 10 years in the underground scene. He began talking about “being sneaky on the Internet” to find the lyrics to his songs, but even if you didn’t know them, you should make something up, and how his next song is “so new you probably don’t know anything about it.” Despot’s banter was deadpan and familiar, leading my roommate to draw incredibly accurate comparisons to Mitch Hedberg. “How many of you have been to a rap show before? ”¦ Then you won’t need much instruction,” he quipped at one point. The set’s highlight, “Look Alive,” had the arms in the air and pumping to the synthy Ratatat-produced beat, as Despot flowed, “Live it up, can’t live it down and quit early / Thirty’s the new twenty, dead is the new thirty.”

Killer Mike took the stage with a black T-shirt featuring a mugshot of Martin Luther King Jr. and launched into “Big Beat” from his 2012 album “R.A.P. Music.” Next up was “Untitled,” as Mike bounced and glided exuberantly across the stage as Trackstar the DJ scratched it out behind him, before cutting the beat out for Mike to spit much of the song again as a spoken word a capella. He did this multiple times during his set, as if speaking the gospel of Killer Mike, full of activist attitude and political education. This was the most poignant is his track “Reagan,” about the repercussions of Reaganomics, culminating by leading the crowd in a “F*ck Ronald Reagan” call and response, and urging the audience to get out and “make it your duty to vote a motherf*cker out of office you don’t like.” Mike also talked about how he has never felt what his grandmother felt in the church, the feeling of goosebumps and salvation, but that he has experienced that feeling before – at rap shows. He closed with “R.A.P. Music’s” title track, the crowd bobbing as Mike preached the chorus, “This is jazz, this is funk, this is soul, this is gospel / This is sanctified sex, this is player Pentecostal / This is church, front, pew, amen, pulpit / What my people need and the opposite of bullsh*t.”

A guitarist and keyboardist flanked El-P as he entered from off-stage and kicked off a thunderous set; I tried to get closer to the stage but the pulsating bass started pumping my blood for me, reverberating through my body like my heart was taking marching orders. I settled further back for “Drones Over BKLYN” from his 2012 album “Cure 4 Cancer” and enjoyed the rest of his hyper-kinetic performance. The backing band’s added textures opened up and transformed El-P’s signature frenetic production into more of a live band sound, as El’s rapid-fire eclectic rhymes plowed full steam ahead as the crowd ate up the chaos. “I am Sam, I am known to go H-A-M, the full retard / Playing taps on a keytar, in the Benz or the Beamer / Either, etherlicious or rebel yelling anathema / Son of forgotten freedom, rebel ¡Arriba ‘riba!” he rapped on “The Full Retard,” and ended his set by jamming a keytar duet with his guitar player (yes, a keytar in all of its glory).

After a brief pause, the opening licks of George Thorogood’s “Bad To The Bone” boomed through the system as Trackstar and El-P’s band took their place, and Mike and El-P took the stage as Run The Jewels, standing on its edge clutching gold chains thick as nautical rope in their fists. They donned them to roaring applause and jumped into the self-titled intro track from their album released last month. While their respective solo sets stood very distinct from each other, the Run The Jewels’ set proved a true melding of their skills, interweaving a seamless blend of flows and hyping one another in tandem. And they had the crowd in the palms of their hands as the synths built up for “Sea Legs,” commanding the swaying of arms and moving of heads to the beat in unison. “Job Well Done” stood out among the bunch, with Mike and El growling their verses over bass-thumps and distorted grooves punctuated with scratching and guitar riffs throughout.

To the side, the merch table was full of unique items, including a shirt featuring the demented squirrel mascot Mr. Killums dicing out coke lines to spell “El-P,” Killer Mike’s “I’m Glad Reagan Dead” T, and a Run The Jewels-engraved weed grinder.