They cover each other, their writing well-sequenced, their rapping finely staged. Best Urban Contemporary Album has been renamed Best Progressive R&B Album. "Love needs fury to fight hate. For Pitchfork, Sheldon Pearce wrote that " RTJ4 centers protest music less explicitly than RTJ3 did, but the moments when the album is most pronouncedly in active revolt are still when it feels most essential". Run the Jewels are El-P and Killer Mike. In one exchange, El strings out a sentence like a line of train cars, “You covet disruption, I got you covered, I’m bustin’/My brother’s a runner, he’s crushin’, it’s no discussion,” crafty in and around the corners, to which Mike adds, frankly: “People, we the pirates, the pride of this great republic/No matter what you order, muhfucka, we’re what you’re stuck with.”The banter holds RTJ’s music together at the seams. But after the taxing process of making El-P, for his part, has rarely sounded so animated. The lyric is about RTJ are still taking it to the streets to fight a tyrannical ruling class and racist policing. Even when serious, it never runs the risk of becoming dour or unbearable, because they feel like they’ll always get the last laugh. Mike’s bluster can cover El’s evasiveness, and El’s tendency to hang back and observe bolsters Mike’s aggression. Much like reality, the raw and unflinching RTJ4 is a lot to take in, both a balm for the rage and fuel to keep the fire burning.
Daily reviews of every important album in music. More Pitchfork; Pitchfork Music Festival Chicago; Pitchfork Music Festival Paris Not El-P and Killer Mike: On RTJ4, the duo deliver their agit-rap gospel with the spry fire of a band making its debut. They shoot back. On their fourth installment, Killer Mike and El-P are back to tune up the ruling class and the racist police state, this time streamlining the process and settling into their most natural rhythm.“You so numb you watch the cops choke out a man like me/Until 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,” Killer Mike raps on “walking in the snow,” his voice urgent. Run The Jewels – ‘Run The Jewels 4’ review: a modern protest classic and their best work yet The righteous rap duo take on police brutality and the fear-mongering media. The P argues 'RTJ40 is closest to who Killer Mike and El-P are - "weary but unbroken, wary but not hopeless, eager to knuckle up". This commitment to wordplay as wisecracks birthed the characters Yankee and the Brave, an imagined buddy comedy action thriller (that may or may not actually come to fruition on the screen), and manifests on the bobbing, RTJ4 begins at war with the police. He is in a near-constant state of agitation, appearing through plumes of weed smoke to kick up dust, like some whistleblowing anti-hero in a dystopian YA novel. This category is intended to highlight albums that include the more progressive elements of R&B and may include samples and elements of hip-hop, rap, dance, and electronic music. “You see a future where Run the Jewels ain’t the shit/Cancel my Hitler-killing trip/Turn the time machine back around a century,” he raps on “the ground below.” It’s that kind of highly self-referential, bluntly political, fun-loving pulp fiction mash-up bar that keeps the project so viable.There are fewer back-and-forth exchanges than on previous albums and the verses don’t dovetail as much but the two still move well in tandem.