Run the Jewels
Ten tracks of razor-sharp tag-team rap over distorted, industrial-tinged beats. A relentless, high-octane debut that feels like a heist movie in a crumbling city.
Ten tracks of razor-sharp tag-team rap over distorted, industrial-tinged beats. A relentless, high-octane debut that feels like a heist movie in a crumbling city.
Debut partnership
A barrage of distorted, metallic synthesizers and bone-rattling drum programming introduces this self-titled debut. The two veteran emcees trade lines with a telepathic chemistry, their words overlapping at the handoffs like runners in a high-speed relay. This is the sound of a newly formed duo with everything to prove, balancing heavy-handed political paranoia with hilarious, over-the-top bravado.
The production is pushed a touch harder into noise textured than this artist usually allows.
Critics warmly embraced the album, widely praising the duo's natural chemistry and their evolution toward a more thoughtful, purposeful perspective. Reviewers generally agreed that while their signature high-energy sound remains familiar, the music feels remarkably urgent and is delivered with an undiminished intensity.
“Hip-hop has seldom sounded this righteous since Public Enemy”Read review
“Remains too entrenched in the grammar of the past to ever feel entirely fresh”Read review
“Run the Jewels can still detonate rhymes like a Molotov cocktail lobbed into a CVS, but now they’re strategizing for the long war ahead”Read review
“Thankfully there’s enough gold at hand to excuse Run The Jewels for getting a little bit carried away with their own runaway success”Read review
“RTJ3 is essentially the Run the Jewels manifesto, an outpouring of rage and defiance that never loses sight of the objectives: rallying the troops, holding all accountable, and toppling oppression”Read review
“A set of songs that alternate between hard-hitting social commentary and boasts about how great Run The Jewels are”Read review
“Killer Mike and El-P’s latest collaboration takes on the politics of the day with relentless energy and biting wordplay”Read review
“The formula is probably becoming familiar, but its time is now”Read review
“The most accomplished chapter in the duo’s trilogy of LPs”Read review
“Three albums deep, Killer Mike and El-P sound as hungry as ever, and the world is still full of Caesars with ripe throats”Read review
“The pair’s poetry remains bold and bizarre, with wondrous lines that variously zing and titillate”Read review
“In short, RTJ3 is near perfect in its execution. They’re so good at this that it seems almost unfair in its effortlessness”Read review
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