When a piece of media comes along that you are excited to consume, said media naturally takes upon a whole different set of expectations than something you merely stumbled upon. The most pertinent examples for me are always director-based: when I saw Silence, I wasn\u2019t merely seeing a new movie. I was seeing a new movie that was directed by a cinematic deity. Add to that the further pressure of Silence being a long-gestating passion project for Martin Scorsese, and I walk into the cinema ready to see a film that Scorsese has thought about in some capacity for over twenty-five years. Almost nothing could possibly live up to that level of expectation. I knew too much.<\/p>\n One thing I have spent my entire life avoiding is learning basically anything about the production or reading or understanding of music. I realized relatively early that as I learned more about cinema, I reacted less emotionally to the movies I was watching; when you can see behind the metaphorical curtain, you start to realize the Wizard isn\u2019t all that imposing. He\u2019s just a dude doing his job that seems to like wearing scarves on set. As somebody that is interested in cinematic wizardry, I consider this a worthy trade-off, but I do not approach all art forms similarly.<\/p>\n With music, I have tried to remove myself from learning much about it; I have always loved music in the same way I love movies and NBA basketball, but I have no use for time signatures and timbres. If asked to name the definition of melody, I think I could do it, but I remain unclear. I never want to know specifically what those various wizards I adore are doing; I\u2019ll always read about their craft, and I\u2019ll learn enough that I can bullshit and use terms like \u201cpunch in\u201d or \u201cguitar tones\u201d to seem informed, but I\u2019ll never quite picture it properly.<\/p>\n What this allows is an occasional level of absurd excitement when I hear something new that I love immediately. Radiohead\u2019s Ful Stop is a recent example, a song that made me think I was living in a nightmare scored by unprecedentedly wonderful guitar tones. Kanye got me with The College Dropout and Late Registration, and then five years later with My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. I was flummoxed by Vince Staples\u2019 Summertime \u201906. And in October 2014, an album I put on merely to wash some plates almost made me smash every one of them.<\/p>\n In short, Run the Jewels 2 is a certified banger. I am not one to immediately denote something a classic album, but as somebody now old enough to understand how music sticks with me through time, I can confidently say RTJ2 will remain in my cold, dead heart until said heart stops functioning. RTJ1 was a good album that I deemed slightly overrated, whereas RTJ2 was the only record I listened to for weeks. It was perfect to run to, perfect to work to, perfect to plan an anarchist potluck to. Killer Mike and El-P had cracked the code.<\/p>\n So, naturally, the promise of Run the Jewels 3 was mildly exciting to me.<\/p>\n When I actually put the new record on, it was immediately intriguing, albeit for less immediate reasons than the pair\u2019s previous outing. Instead of Killer Mike yelling about how powerful his introductory verse was going to be off the top of Jeopardy, the beat to RTJ3\u2019s opener Down does a slow fade in; the beat is amazing, the song is incredible, but Down is indicative of the slightly altered feel of RTJ3 as a record.<\/p>\n The reason Run the Jewels were able to gain the popularity they did was built around the idea that their albums didn\u2019t sound like other hip-hop albums. To say RTJ releases belonged to a genre of their own is hyperbolic and silly, but to say that not a lot of rappers make records under forty minutes – let alone albums that are so persistently aggressive – is unequivocally true. And that\u2019s the core difference between RTJ2 and RTJ3: Run the Jewels 2 sounds like a Run the Jewels record, while Run the Jewels 3 sounds like a normal hip-hop album. A great one, for sure, but different than what came before.<\/p>\n That is not to say the old RTJ is dead and buried: Talk to Me, the second track, is about as Run the Jewels as it gets. El-P beginning his verse with the line \u201cBrave men didn\u2019t die face down in the Vietnam mud so I could not style on you\u201d is equal parts hilarious and visceral, simultaneously offensive and respectful of people willing to die for their country. Go Ticketron is another textbook RTJ jam, for reasons unrelated to the fact that the name Run the Jewels is repeated a comical fourteen times in three minutes. But for much of the album, Run the Jewels feel calmer and more human than they have on past records. There are more songs that feel like Crown and fewer Close Your Eyes (And Count to Fuck) equivalents.<\/p>\n Part of this has to be attributed to the length of the album; you can sprint for the majority of 39 minutes, but when you\u2019re running for 52 minutes you have to jog a bit more. As such, some of the songs on RTJ3 feel slower than what has come previously (even though some hard music-based, Jonah Keri-style analytics might prove this theory wrong). Of course, \u201cIt\u2019s longer and I got bored\u201d is not a criticism I\u2019m going to let fly here. RTJ3 is longer than its predecessor, sure, but that is not the real complaint. The problem is that with the shorter length, the chaff begins to jump out a bit from the wheat; songs like Stay Gold and 2100\u00a0seem worse simply because they\u2019re 7\/10s from a group that didn’t put\u00a0anything less than an 8 on the last record.<\/p>\n That said, Killer Mike and El-P\u2019s rapping remains at their previously established, continually ridiculous highs. Mike is so well established as a great rapper that this is no surprise; somehow his influence and talent have made El-P even better than he already was. El-P\u2019s flows have gotten more creative, his funniest lyrics funnier, and his level of fuck giving seems to have gone from negative two to negative fourteen. (See the aforementioned line about Vietnam vets, presumably written while he was doing push-ups nude at the edge of cliffs.)<\/p>\n![\"RTJ1\"](\"http:\/\/themacguffinmen.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/RTJ1.jpg\")
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