FFWD REW

The Jaime and Mike Show

Chalk it up to some drug-induced amnesia or simple boredom in regards to the topic but Killer Mike just can’t seem to recall what prompted him to write and deliver the opening bars of “Job Well Done” by Run the Jewels.

“I’m sure marijuana was involved” Mike born Michael Render jests about the inception of the track’s murderous first verse. “Nah I’m gonna tell you honestly man I respect El-P as one of the top fucking five or 10 rappers in the world and when you’re writing next to one of the top five or 10 rappers in the world then you have to just say ‘I’m going to play to my strength and gonna go hard as fuck.’ I don’t necessarily remember dates and times ‘cause every time I put Mike’s mouth to microphone it is a game of one-upmanshipment with myself and with my rhyme partner.”

But El-P the aforementioned producer and fellow emcee in the mind-bending duo isn’t going to let that particular take slide.

“I remember that” says El known in the civilian world as Jaime Meline. “You know Mike is going to kill it when he tries to talk you out of putting the beat on the record in order to give it to his album. Every time he does that and then I have to be ‘no fuck you rap on this shit and it’s going on our record or you’re never going to rap on it.’ Then he just comes out like a fucking flaming savage. There’s always one on the record. It’s actually adorable. He actually tries to get it out of my hands and shit and I just look at him and say ‘there’s just no way it’s not going to happen.’”

And that ladies and gents is the creative process of the most significant and unexpected hip-hop group of the moment.

Three Run the Jewels-related facts are critical knowledge to fully appreciate how exactly the group created one of the best (not to mention free) rap albums of 2013.

To begin with the duo — which consists of Atlanta’s Killer Mike and Brooklyn’s El-P — are hip-hop elders of the post-Big L and Pun era; the former scored his first feature on an OutKast joint from Stankonia while the latter kicked it off a few years prior with Company Flow’s legendary Funcrusher Plus. Since then a combined nine solo albums have been released between the two of them. A majority have set new personal and genre-wide standards. Mike’s most recent career-mdefining effort — 2012’s R.A.P. Music — was entirely produced by El-P.

Next the two have entirely distinct musical vibes. Mike’s a proud man of Georgia: strippers and Hot Wheels are his oft-proclaimed passions. His fierce delivery combines an Andre 3000-like precision and tone with a belligerent lyrical bent only comparable to Dead Prez or Danny Brown. Meanwhile El-P tends to favour cryptic sci-fi and apocalyptic references dispatched in an abrupt rappity rap manner; his phenomenal production work is equally as chaotic fusing Blade Runner-honouring synths and intricately buried samples. The highly influential though now-defunct Def Jux label is his baby. Late 2000s experimental hip-hop owes much to him.

But finally and most importantly Mike and El-P are the closest of buds. It’s not just an act.

El-P is the first to arrive at the conference call. Killer Mike for whatever reason is running late a reality that El-P immediately ridicules.

“I’m high and drinking coffee” El-P reports from the studio in which he’s plodding away. “The day is on schedule.”

El-P’s a rapid banterer facetiously asserting that he’s high on crack within seconds of the initial greeting (“just one hit to get the mind straight the brain going and the blood flowing”); mushrooms and weed were largely credited for the success of their debut effort but there’s no reference to a drug of choice on this particular day. He soon expands on his recent acquisition of a Rhythm King drum machine from Brooklyn’s Main Drag Music (“What can I say? I’ve got a fucking Rhythm King. You will hear a Rhythm King hi-hat on the new Run the Jewels record”).

But once Killer Mike shows up — midway through El-P describing what’s required to keep his bandmate happy on tour — the teasing truly begins. It’s one of the very few interviews that doesn’t come across as mandated by the press corps.

“There’s only two things that Mike needs to be in a good mood: marijuana and it’s not just like ‘oh hey this is fun’: Mike needs marijuana to be happy” El-P says. “And he has to be able to frequently FaceTime with his wife. And often if you could combine them he’s just a pig in shit.”

Mike chuckling is quick to return the favour.

“It’s a plethora of Asian food eateries that El needs” he says. “You have to have Asian food. You have to have a decent Starbucks even if you’re in the middle of Iowa. And it would help if he woke up immediately to a coffee and cigarette within 15 seconds of foot on the floor. That man ain’t got his coffee it’s a problem. And he loves great Asian food so if there are great Asian restaurants out there reach out to us.”

There’s as much laughter as rap talk.

This sense of camaraderie is precisely what defined the duo’s first undertaking; Run the Jewels — a barely half-hour 10-track record — contained a furiously composed concoction of outright bravado (“I fuck like I’m headed to war”) pithy social commentaries (“cops in the ghetto they move like the Gestapo”) and beyond-black humour (“I put the pistol on that poodle and I shot that bitch”). El-P the sonic architect of the scathing beats assures that the upcoming album titled Run the Jewels 2 will only be taking the ethos to an even gloomier level.

“On the first album we kept it a little bit — I don’t want to say ‘light’ ‘cause there’s no way you could define the Run the Jewels record as ‘light’ — but we certainly didn’t touch on too many things apart from a couple of jams where we really made a point to do it” he says. “We kind of grew a little bit. We wanted to do what all classic groups do which is take the next step. And the next step for us was to get a little bit more into the territory that we’ve been able to explore on our own and kind of see what that looked like when we’re doing that together.”

The terrain that Killer Mike and El-P have explored independently has indeed been impassioned. Mike’s served as the lone spokesperson of the militant rap camp for many a year; tracks such as “That’s Life” “Burn” and “Reagan” — only three plucked from a deep fiery discography — exemplify his combative stance. El-P on the flip side has been the preeminent diagnostician of our post-9/11 union-crushed technocratic society with desolate observations expelled in fabulously listenable form on three solo albums. His beatmaking for the likes of Cannibal Ox Aesop Rock and Mr. Lif has only solidified his cultural standing.

At one point in the conversation Killer Mike draws an apt parallel between Run the Jewels and a graphic novel both of which combine intense subject matter with visceral imagery. But seldom does a writer and illustrator combo — besides Chris Hedges and Joe Sacco perhaps — manage to orchestrate such a provocative and captivating product as Run the Jewels. And that record was only the beginning. Zach de la Rocha and Travis Barker have been photographed in Los Angeles’ Cosmic Zoo alongside Mike and El. “RTJ2” as El-P once tweeted “isn’t even fair.”

One of the most notable aspects of Run the Jewels was the scarceness of guest features; in the age of Kanye’s My Beautiful Dark Fantasy and Pusha T’s My Name is My Name the inclusion of a single guest rapper on a record (Big Boi in this case) is a rare occurrence. But the choice by Run the Jewels to keep the project close to home didn’t come down to a budget crunch.

“I feel like neither of us want to glory-chase where you go get a bunch of dope features and then you never get a chance to perform the record together” says Killer Mike. “We’ve said from the beginning of Run the Jewels that we are here to be a real rap group. I never once picked up a EPMD record and wondered who the guests were. They never gave no names. If a guest pops up and the audience appreciates it I appreciate that. But this is the Jaime and Mike Show.”

The recording and refining of RTJ2 has taken a while to execute a reality El-P chalks up to the distance between he and Mike: “If we were in the same city this record would’ve been done five months ago” he says. California Atlanta New York and Australia have all served as recording locales. But now according to a recent tweet by El-P the album is mixed and ready to ship. A 90-second track featuring a plodding beat and some of the sharpest rhymes of the year has dropped. It’s all systems go.

SIDEBAR:

Jewels from the past

A look at the duo’s DNA

Run the Jewels is in many ways a supergroup: close to every album released by Killer Mike and El-P over the years has expressed a rare level of dedication and consistency. To understand just why they’re so good together you need to look at their back catalogue. Here’s a small selection of must-listen records from El-P and Killer Mike.

Fantastic Damage by El-P (2002): The half-decade that bracketed Y2K was in many respects El-P’s golden years. Company Flow dropped two underground hits before 2000 while his beatmaking work on Cannibal Ox’s The Cold Vein set the new standard for glitchy production work. Fantastic Damage his debut solo record sealed the deal. Abrasive and terrifying yet so very listenable.

I Pledge Allegiance to the Grind by Killer Mike (2006): The one that started it all. Monster set a hell of a high bar for a debut effort but it was the first Pledge album that truly established Mike as the counterweight between radical thought and untameable rhyming. Two more iterations of Pledge have been released since with another on the way.

High Water by El-P and Blue Series Continuum (2004): A prime example of the fact El-P truly can and will work with anyone. His father was a jazz pianist a fact this album pays homage to (and with a small guest feature from his patriarch). Free-jazz pro Matthew Shipp and his crew collaborating with the deranged producer offered phenomenal results.

R.A.P. Music by Killer Mike and El-P (2012): Definitive listening for anyone wishing to comprehend the greatness of Run the Jewels. Even since Jason DeMarco of Adult Swim introduced the pair a few years back neither have worked significantly with anyone else. R.A.P. Music proves why. Absolutely monstrous rapping paired with El-P’s trademark bizarro beats.

Cancer 4 Cure by El-P (2012): The late 2000s were fucking brutal for El-P. Def Jux folded production credits were few and his close friend Camu Tao passed from lung cancer. Cancer 4 Cure released only a week after R.A.P. Music channelled all that anguish into a phenomenal album propelling El-P back into the top echelon of the rap world.

Every guest feature ever recorded by Killer Mike (2000-present):

Killer Mike was slaying rappers on their own tracks way before Kendrick Lamar; he kept up bar-to-bar with OutKast on his first two public appearances later holding his own on Jay Z’s stacked “Poppin’ Tags.” He’s since carved a space as one of the most reliable guest rappers in the game.

Run the Jewels is in many ways a supergroup: close to every album released by Killer Mike and El-P over the years has expressed a rare level of dedication and consistency. To understand just why they’re so good together you need to look at their back catalogue. Here’s a small selection of must-listen records from El-P and Killer Mike.

Fantastic Damage by El-P (2002): The half-decade that bracketed Y2K was in many respects El-P’s golden years. Company Flow dropped two underground hits before 2000 while his beatmaking work on Cannibal Ox’s The Cold Vein set the new standard for glitchy production work. Fantastic Damage his debut solo record sealed the deal. Abrasive and terrifying yet so very listenable.

I Pledge Allegiance to the Grind by Killer Mike (2006): The one that started it all. Monster set a hell of a high bar for a debut effort but it was the first Pledge album that truly established Mike as the counterweight between radical thought and untameable rhyming. Two more iterations of Pledge have been released since with another on the way.

High Water by El-P and Blue Series Continuum (2004): A prime example of the fact El-P truly can and will work with anyone. His father was a jazz pianist a fact this album pays homage to (and with a small guest feature from his patriarch). Free-jazz pro Matthew Shipp and his crew collaborating with the deranged producer offered phenomenal results.

R.A.P. Music by Killer Mike and El-P (2012): Definitive listening for anyone wishing to comprehend the greatness of Run the Jewels. Even since Jason DeMarco of Adult Swim introduced the pair a few years back neither have worked significantly with anyone else. R.A.P. Music proves why. Absolutely monstrous rapping paired with El-P’s trademark bizarro beats.

Cancer 4 Cure by El-P (2012): The late 2000s were fucking brutal for El-P. Def Jux folded production credits were few and his close friend Camu Tao passed from lung cancer. Cancer 4 Cure released only a week after R.A.P. Music channelled all that anguish into a phenomenal album propelling El-P back into the top echelon of the rap world.

Every guest feature ever recorded by Killer Mike (2000-present):

Killer Mike was slaying rappers on their own tracks way before Kendrick Lamar; he kept up bar-to-bar with OutKast on his first two public appearances later holding his own on Jay Z’s stacked “Poppin’ Tags.” He’s since carved a space as one of the most reliable guest rappers in the game.

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