Review Summary: Filler Mike and Smelly (this album stinks)
Audiences generally praised the latest effort from Killer Mike and El-P,
Run the Jewels 2 , saying the flow and beats are both good enough to stand on their own, and together they make a perfect rhythmic cohesion. Yet some listeners observed the awkward stylistic cohesion of the duo. You could just imagine El-P and Killer Mike looking at one another, thinking of topics to rap about, wondering what they have in common. Then after a few hours of them ‘sparking their creativity’, El-P comes up with two things: fukking and rapping. Killer Mike grins, nods, then chips in that they both smoke the kush. Wim-Dam-Doozle-Done.
Run The Jewels was born.
This time though, for the sequel, something had to be different. Got it. Mummy hands and a red background for the album cover. On all other accounts this is essentially the exact same album as Run the Jewels 1. It’s like one of those Mad Lib work sheets where they fill out most of the story for you and you just chip in a few random nouns/adjectives. Yet this glaring lack in unoriginality is easily ignored when you consider El-P’s masterful production. Songs like “All Due Respect” have impeccable timing with the use of war-chant samples, and the beat-changes match the aggression of the lyrics perfectly. “Love Again” has an addictive and seductive beat, “Angel Duster” and “Crown” both succeed in setting a mystic-spacey atmosphere, and “Oh My Darling Don’t Cry” is an excellent, high-tempo, party beat.
The problem is a lot of weaknesses of this album are hidden by its stellar production. As previously mentioned, El-P and Killer Mike’s lyrical topics don’t really overlap much at all. They are forced to make banal ideas fun using rhymes and flow alone. On his solo albums, Killer Mike is usually a lot smoother, yet he is still able to come across as extremely aggressive. On RTJ2, he often sounds like he’s screaming to give his mediocre lyricism some kick. El-P is forced to radically change his style for this album to keep up with the human blimp of testosterone next to him, and the result is not impressive. He still creates a number of solid raps, using intricate rhyme patterns, abstract lyrics and riddling word-play. The problem is none of his raps are nearly as impressive as when he is left alone for an entire track on his solo albums. Having such a limited time per track keeps his concepts quite simple, superficial even, relative to his past works.
Overall, Killer Mike and El-P succeeded in creating a good album. On the first listen, this album sounds rather amazing; the problem is it lacks playback value for many hip hop fans. From a production standpoint this is close to perfect in many ways, from a rap standpoint it’s quite mediocre. Therefore, casual hip hop fans who are satisfied by the beats alone will find little wrong with the album, but people who are more picky with their hip hop’s lyrical topics will not be very impressed by this. To many Hip Hop fans, this album feels like two of your best friends moving away and coming back years later as completely different people. Many would say Killer Mike and El-P evolved and created a highly addictive style, that’s enjoyable even to those who despise hip hop, but they also wound up alienating some of their biggest supporters by adopting such a drastically different style from their solo efforts.
