Album Review: Run The Jewels 3 Is A Christmas Miracle

Run The Jewels are on of my FAVORITE Hip Hop Duos, and this Christmas they released Run The Jewels 3, as part of their record trilogy. RTJ3 is one of the best Hip Hop album of the year, which explains why its Christmas release, three weeks ahead of its scheduled date, felt like a miracle. Nothing like good music to provide holiday cheer, and Run The Jewels 3 is an album to ring in the New Year.

//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.jsRTJ3 has to be the best work of Killer Mike and El-P’s rap partnership. The duo have captivated audiences with their high caliber work and “ying and yang” rap flows that blend beautifully. El-P’s voice has the charmed fluidity of a man confident his words will get him what he wants from his audience. Whether he is asking a woman to “Stay Gold” with her body and mind, or affirming RTJ’s consistent delivery of prowess in “Panther Like A Panther“, El- P delivers his lyricism with the ease you show when baiting your catch. The catch being listeners’ loyalty, which is solidified by the bull-dozing verbosity of Killer Mike. I have always been a huge fan of Killer Mike, especially when his lyrics reveal compassionate intellectualism like in “Thursday In The Danger Room” or “Everybody Stay Calm“. There he elaborates the struggles of giving hope to others for the seeming hopelessness of social poverty/ prejudice. RTJ as a group has NEVER backed away from bringing a note to the social wounds that must be healed like, in “Hey Kids” where Killer Mike schools listeners on the sheer devastation of being deemed low in social worth. His flow is like a blade causing cut after cut on your soul just imagining any poor, black, and underprivileged child struggle with both adult and inhumane issues.

//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.jsOne thing I love about RTJ3, and RTJ as a Hip Hop duo, is that they sound new. I have concluded that for however smart or good you are, if you are not new, you can fall flat. Part of Run The Jewels success is that they take classic Hip Hop production and transform it with their personal flare. No one can match the poesy and essence of El-P’s smooth verses and Killer Mikes’s dominating style in songs like “Don’t Get Captured” , “Call Ticketron“, and “Thieves! (Screamed The Ghost)” . The two match well to heighten sonics that have the grain and grit from an underground Hip Hop battle. You can just see the people gathering in the dim lit space ready to received the light of  RTJ’s truth and casual wisdom drops. This duo have no qualms leaping from a educational to revelatory in their attempt to not just call out the stupidities of social division but actually give some sense of resolution. “A Report To Shareholders/ Kill Your Masters” is basically a call for people to stop complaining about their chains and actually break them After, all there would be no rich if there were no poor. The privilege need the underprivileged to stay lowly for their sense of high; if you wish to change your status then change your perspective. Again, another track elaborating that this duo are here to move your minds and bodies with their beats.

I know I have gone into the girth and depth of Run The Jewels 3, but it does have its playful braggadocios nature like, in “Legend Has It“. RTJ’s annotations and delivery are a ripe blend of truth and dare. They declare the craziest facts of life as a social and spiritual being with a casualness that is stunning in reception, but, at times, scary in reality. Of course, no one wants to know the darkness that lies in the world, but when RTJ tells you, they do it through beats that empower you to conquer it with light. For More Information On Run The Jewels and To Buy Run The Jewels 3 Click Here.