“I was not making the music on a consistent basis that I wanted to be making, and I was living for the expectations of others,” he said.
Mike also wasn’t a perfect fit for the world of major labels and corporate boardrooms. During our conversation, he proudly cited some of those lessons, like to never rest on the laurels of his past work and to “stay swagged the up, and look like something when you’re on camera.” His association began when Outkast was the biggest rap group in the world, and he learned eagerly within their orbit. Before Run the Jewels, Killer Mike was a satellite member of Outkast’s Dungeon Family collective, guesting on other people’s hits and releasing a few near-hits of his own. Plenty of talented solo rappers have teamed up, but not permanently, and especially not in their late 30s after spending most of their careers on their genre’s commercial periphery. They’re even in talks to film an actual buddy cop comedy. Run the Jewels was founded in 2013 with no expectations beyond making “a mixtape as friends,” as El-P put it, and now they’ve toured the world, put out multiple records to sustainable commercial and critical acclaim, and seen their insignia - a gun pointed at a fist holding a golden chain, demanding it be handed over - tattooed on bodies and thrown up by presidential candidates. “The first few layers of scabs you pick are kind of dead-skinned, and as you get closer to the cutting and healing, it starts to tingle a little. “This record, I got deeper,” he said in a separate interview. “It’d be a lie if I told you that I ever disdained the fortune and fame/But the presence of the pleasure never abstained me from any of the pain,” Killer Mike raps on “A Few Words for the Firing Squad,” before a moving verse about the death of his mother in 2017, and how his wife prodded him not to turn into “another junkie flunky rapper fiend” while dealing with his anguish. They threaten exaggerated new ways of visiting justice upon criminals (the unlovable kind) and the deeply corny, and spit passionately over adrenalizing, glitched-out production about the importance of remaining clearheaded inside our normal American nightmare. Across three albums, and this fourth due June 5, the rappers born Michael Render and Jaime Meline have chronicled the running adventures of Killer Mike and El-P, lovable outlaws and best friends tasked with guarding each others’ backs in a world gone mad with corruption and greed.
This self-deprecation was a slight deflection: Run the Jewels does, in fact, know what is going on. “I hate to break it to people that it’s like, We’re just making music. “Sometimes it seems like people want to know there’s some sort of really great concept,” El-P said. That’s partly because they’re defining the record in real time. This is how Run the Jewels’ two members, El-P and Killer Mike, have described their latest album, “Run the Jewels 4.” They added two more during a recent interview conducted over Zoom: “Having fun, and still punching and robbing every kid for their Starter jacket in the park” music (that’s Mike, talking from his home in Atlanta), and “armed robbery with a moment of self-discovery” music (that’s El-P, speaking from his place in upstate New York).Ĭonfidence is a foundational element of hip-hop, but the members of Run the Jewels have turned cartoonishly talking about their music into an entertainment of its own.
Or, and this is quite specific: “The most frigid of New York days, and you’re walking out of Katz’s with a pastrami sandwich, and somebody punches you in your face” music.