Run the Jewels: Run The Jewels 2

Functional hip-hop duos are a rarity these days. It takes work to balance out strong personalities that have a lot to say. It makes you respect what a group like OutKast accomplished, and it explains the appeal of Killer Mike and El-P on last year’s ambitious Run The Jewels debut album. Hip hop hadn’t been this fun in a long time, and RTJ made it even more fun by offering their album for free. Run The Jewels 2 is released in the same spirit of accessibility to music and real hip hop, from two artists who’ve been in the game for over a decade, doing things their way.
RTJ2 is a fierce release. The album’s opening track, “Jeopardy,” is the ultimate “LISTEN UP!” moment. In an interview with The Fader, Killer Mike said, “Let’s put that long, dope, dark-ass verse to let muthafuckas know that this shit is REAL for the next 40 minutes or so.” And if you didn’t get the message on the first track, then it’s surely chiseled into your core on “Oh My Darling Don’t Cry.” It’s one of the rawest and hardest hip-hop beats to come out in years with Mike and El-P trading bars. The bass is so encapsulating, and Mike’s “oh my” peppered into the background makes it a haunting experience.
They test each other’s hip-hop fluency often. It’s almost as if they’re competing to see who can rap faster, better and more articulately. But there’s a darker undertone to this record than the first time around; they’re happy, but they’re also pissed. On “Lie, Cheat, Steal” Mike describes mass media chaos in an anti-Donald Sterling diatribe with “Like who really run dis/ Who really run that man who say he run dis?” Fitting coming from the guy who rapped “Fuck Ronald Reagan!” two years ago on the El-P-produced album R.A.P. Music.