There are those
Jagger/
Richards,
Jimmy Jam/
Terry Lewis, or
DJ Jazzy Jeff/
Fresh Prince-styled collaborations that always seem fruitful. The music created by
Killer Mike and
El-P easily falls into this category, and is closest to that of
Jeff and
Prince's, not just because the duo fall under the same category of "hip-hop" but also because
Run the Jewels 2, like its predecessor, comes with some joy baked in. It's a broken, ironic, and underground kind of joy as the hard-hitting "Oh My Darling Don't Cry" shows its pimp-hand with "You can all run naked backwards through a field of dicks" and also shows its business card because "You're in luck, it says I do two things: rap and fuck." This sophomore effort keeps the slanted spirit of the original, as mixing the attitude of
N.W.A. with the weirdness of Adult Swim is both comfortable and fertile ground for the duo, but the "album" does try harder in the "serious" department. Paranoid androids like "Blockbuster Night, Pt. 1" benefit, as if
Run-DMC embraced
EL-P's compressed beatmaking and dropped the F-bomb whenever possible. "Early" is deadly serious with
Killer Mike pleading "I apologize if it seems I got out of line sir, cuz I respect the badge and a gun/And I pray today ain't the day you drag me away right in front of my son," and that's right before things turn grave. "All Due Respect" with
Travis Barker enters
Death Grips' territory with punk, techno, and vicious rhymes all crawling up the spine, but this rebel music can still come with a smirk, as a stuttering
Zach de la Rocha offers the infectious and weird hook on the wonderfully titled highlight "Close Your Eyes (And Count to Fuck)." If the first album was the supernova,
RTJ2 is the
RTJ universe forming, proving that
Mike and
El-P's one-off can be a going, and ever growing, concern. ~ David Jeffries