Run the Jewels: a few words for the firing squad (radiation)
Run the Jewels’ album RTJ4 (which features previously released “Ooh La La“) was due two days from now, but the duo surprise-dropped the album today, along with the statement, “Fuck it, why wait. The world is infested with bullshit so here’s something raw to listen to while you deal with it all.” The duo (aka El-P and Killer Mike) made the album available for free download, encouraging listeners to redirect the money they would have spent to Black Lives Matter funds. On the album’s final track—a sprawling, searing, nearly-seven-minute outro—Killer Mike and El-P are more piercing than ever. Over a jazz improvisation, Killer Mike raps, “Black child in America, the fact that I made it’s magic / Black and beautiful, the world broke my mama heart, and she died an addict… / This is for the do-gooders that the no-gooders used and then abused / For the truth tellers tied to the whippin’ post, left beaten, battered, bruised / For the ones whose body hung from a tree like a piece of strange fruit / Go hard, last words to the firing squad was ‘Fuck you too.'”
