The unintentional soundtrack of the George Floyd protests

Run the Jewels' latest wasn't meant to be the background to an uprising. That's partly what makes it so powerful.

Run the Jewels.
(Image credit: Illustrated | AP Images, iStock)

In mid-May, the New York rapper, producer, and ex-indie label executive El-P discussed his past work with The Ringer, and dismissed any notion of his artistic prescience. His debut solo album, 2002's abrasive, paranoid Fantastic Damage, was seen upon its release as a misanthropic survey of post-9/11 America. But, he told the site, it was recorded before the attacks. "So the s--- that you're hearing on that record, believe it or not, is from a guy who, before 9/11 happened, was thinking the way that everyone started thinking when 9/11 happened… I was annoyed and angry that people weren't thinking this way until something f---ing horrible happened to them … That was the first experience I'd ever had with a record landing at a time when there had been some event that people naturally associated with it."

19 years later, it has happened again, and with even greater force. El-P is now best known as one half of Run the Jewels, his duo with the Atlanta rapper Killer Mike; their fourth album, RTJ4, was rush-released on June 3 to a country at war with itself. "The world is infested with bulls--- so here's something raw to listen to while you deal with it all," they posted on Instagram. The group, which started as a mixtape project in 2013, has become a dependable source of rap that is at once irate, despairing, defiant, and funny. Across their catalog, El-P's production has maintained a precise and relentless cacophony; none of their 40-odd songs could be considered a "breather." But while their first three albums (and Mike's vocal support of Bernie Sanders) got them labeled "protest rappers," their pranksterism — lyrically assaulting baby bears and poodles, remixing RTJ2 to get more cats in it — sometimes overshadowed their furor. They sounded political even when they were goofing off though. "[RTJ3] feels like a protest album," The New Yorker wrote in 2017, "in the way that many things that sound a note of refusal feel political these days."

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Jacob Lambert

Jacob Lambert is the art director of TheWeek.com. He was previously an editor at MAD magazine, and has written and illustrated for The Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia Weekly, and The Millions.