Album Review - Run The Jewels - Run The Jewels 4

    Welcome to another edition of Album Review Friday. Today, I will be reviewing Run The Jewels 4, the fourth studio album by Run The Jewels, their first since 2016. This album was supposed to drop today, but the rap duo decided to release it early and for free after Killer Mike's impassioned speech to Atlanta following the death of George Floyd. The album is a peculiar breath of fresh air, one of my friends so eloquently described it as "a long freestyle on top of a post apocalyptic broadway musical score". I could not agree more. Without further ado, let's dig in to some of the songs.

    The album starts off with "yankee and the brave (ep.4)". The title describes the new name the rap duo gave to themselves as vigilantes fighting back the police. Yankee and the Brave namely refer to the baseball teams of each rappers respective city. Clever and catchy. The song starts with a 16 bar build then drops over Kanye-esque drum patterns. After which the duo take turns trading 3 verses each with a DJ Trackstar scratch ensemble in the middle. Killer Mike reminisces about the Christopher Dorner police standoff and plays the officer in the song. As the story goes, the officer contemplates killing himself, to which El-P says that he doesnt ' get to just die'. He then slips out the back door, comes face to face with the cop and kills him with no remorse after learning that the cop killed a black child previously, in reference to the cop opting to kill himself rather than burn in the fire.

    We then move on to the only single off the album, "ooh la la". It features hip hop legends DJ Premier and Greg Nice, who are also sampled on the chorus from their famous song "DWYCK". Killer Mike's crazy lyricism intermingling "Fuck the law", "ODB Shimmy Shimmy Ya" and "Jeru the Damaja" is on heavy display. In the second verse he drops a Batman reference and how he used to prefer Bruce but now feels more like Joker where inmates run the asylum, a reference to Arkham prison.

    In the next song "out of sight", the duo have their first dual verse where they both rap together on the same verse. Killer Mike acts as if he's robbing El-P and tells him that its an 'honor to be robbed by Denise's son'. Killer Mike's mom's name is Denise. Killer Mike then pays tribute to his gangsters in a clever play on words 'Sosa was my hero only, Tony's just a fuckin' Hawk-ster (Out of sight)' referring to Tony Montana and Tony Hawk. Verse 3 and 4 are where Killer Mike and El - P shine with two very rhyme heavy eloquent verses. 2-Chainz needed a beat slow down on his verse and felt rushed because he couldn't compete with those two on that beat, but I guess they needed to add an Atlanta rapper somehow on this album. 

    "holy calamafuck" is a song that can be described by panic. They start off with cyber sounds and verses where El and Mike come up with creative ways to describe themselves such as: "Mike Myers, murder rapper for hire" and "Buddhist McGyver" where they both use the -er rhyme scheme. This is followed by a complete beat switch in the middle of the song followed by shorter calamitous bars where they sound like they're coming for you. Sound bite transition to the next song, thanks again Joe LaPorta.*

    "goonies vs. ET" is only 2 verses long but has heavy 808s that run through the entire track at first and then slowly adds HiHats and layers to accentuate lyrically heavy verses with lines like 'Ain't no revolution that's televised and digitized, You've been hypnotized and Twitter-ized by silly guys, Cues to the evenin' news, make sure you ill-advised'. We see a reference to Gil-Scott Heron's infamous phrase and the song ends with an ode to the Wu-Tang Clan.

    "walking in the snow" is the song that is the most relevant to today's events. El talks about how its a must to support and stand up for people who need it as well as criticizing the right-wing so-called Christians to actually heed the words of Jesus. Mike really takes his verse to another level. I am just going to quote a little bit of his verse, no descriptive writing will do this justice: 

'The way I see it, you're probably freest from the ages one to four

Around the age of five you're shipped away for your body to be stored

They promise education, but really they give you tests and scores

And they predictin' prison population by who scoring the lowest

And usually the lowest scores the poorest and they look like me

And every day on evening news they feed you fear for free

And you so numb you watch the cops choke out a man like me

And 'til my voice goes from a shriek to whisper, "I can't breathe"

And you sit there in the house on couch and watch it on TV

The most you give's a Twitter rant and call it a tragedy

But truly the travesty, you've been robbed of your empathy

Replaced it with apathy, I wish I could magically

Fast forward the future so then you can face it

And see how fucked up it'll be"

    "JU$T" featuring Pharrell and Zach de la Rocha starts off with an intro on today's world master vs. slave dynamic, only further emphasized in the chorus in "Look at all these slave masters posing on your dollar". They're pointing out that with the exception of Abraham Lincon and Alexander Hamilton, every president that appears on a piece of US currency owned slaves at some point in their lives. The rest of song describes the artist's relationship with money.

    "never look back" was the most personal song on the album where both El-P and Killer Mike go through their pasts and upbringings in New York and Atlanta respectively and they are aware of the mistakes that they made but will never look back.

    "the ground below" brings us back to hard-hitting beats and clever wordplay with lines from Killer Mike such as "This is Bonaparte and he playing with Toussaint, And they went on a world conquest, tearing your bone apart". El-P demands and asserts that in the rap game he will get his respect regardless of what anybody says.

    "pulling the pin" as suggested in the title of the penultimate song is the calm before the storm, the pin pull before grenade explosion. A mellower beat combined with lyrics that are rife with self-reflection and trying to under the world's and their own cynicism.

    The album's final song "a few words for the firing squad" starts with an amazing horns ensemble mixed with echo sounds that is always on a gradual build to the instrumental break. It goes back to their resistance theme and hatred for people in positions of power. Killer Mike talks about his mom's death and how he dealt with it in regards to his family and his wife keeping him straight and smart. They made sure to keep his activism in check as his wife exclaims that 'I need a husband more than the world need another martyr'. El-P dedicates the song (and eventually the album) to the underdogs, his sister and people's right to protest. Killer Mike is happy and thankful to have made it this far as a black man and dedicates this album to people who have experienced oppression in its many forms and reaffirms his resistance by finally screaming 'Fuck you too' to the metaphorical firing squad. After the instrumental break that sounds like it would be a score from a movie with a powerful brass solo, Matt Sweeney gives the voice over for what would be the movie trailer for 'Yankee and the Brave' with the help of A$AP Ferg, perfectly wrapping up the album and bringing it full circle.

    This album is very poignant and powerful for this moment in time. A work of art that has been long awaited and one that has certainly delivered. If you haven't listened to the album, please listen below. As always, thanks for reading my review and stay tuned for more awesome music!

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* Joe Laporta is a mastering engineer that was referenced in the previous album review of Alfredo