An Evening with Run The Jewels
“How y’all feelin?”
The crowd at the Marquee, in Tempe, obligingly answers with a cheer. I know Nick Hook to be a talented producer and DJ, but he doesn’t quite have us in his pocket tonight; this is the seventh or eighth time he’s asked how we’re doing, and his set is barely a half-hour in. He doesn’t seem confident up there. Maybe it’s his choice of music –– a mix of popular rap and electronica, a lot of which seems forced, somehow, coming from him. A white guy with a shaved head, devoid of his usual blonde locks and hipster frames, he seems self-aware that he’s an odd messenger for this music about escaping the trap, smoking crack, and getting head.
People seem to be having a good enough time, though. I nod along to the songs I know, and some that I don’t. A guest appearance from female rapper Gangsta Boo lends him some credibility before he finishes out the set. By no means has he lost the crowd entirely; we’re all just kind of waiting for the next act. And holy shit does The Gaslamp Killer not disappoint. This cat knows what he’s doing, and within seconds he has us by the collar, yanking us from rap to video-game-noise electronica to footwork to soul to heavy metal to Turkish, Indian, and Syrian music and back again. Every transition makes sense, and brings something new and crazy into the room. He looks like a lion –– enormous curly afro, face obscured by an impressively full beard –– and performs with the raw power of one ripping a gazelle to shreds. Every beat, every blip, every sound, has a corresponding movement –– a hand gesture, a headbang, a wild facial expression. He picks up his machines and spins around with them; he plays hide and seek behind the table they sit on. Tracks are introduced with anecdotes and asides, admonishing us to love in this time of hate, to mix cultures, to get ready to go fucking nuts. By doing nothing more than being entirely himself –– in every musical choice, in every cell in his shuddering body –– he is in complete control. He surrenders to the music, and so do we.
But my friend Jayke and I didn’t come for this, as good as it is. We came for Run The Jewels. After a half-hour wait of soft background music and “RTJ!” chants, the lights dim again and “We Are the Champions” gets things going, and boy do they go. Killer Mike and El-P, or the silhouettes of them, survey the crowd before a backdrop of white lights. A wave of hands go up, making the Run the Jewels gesture –– left-handed fist, right-handed two-fingered pistol, pointing at each other. What this means, or where it came from, I couldn’t tell you, but it’s our thing.
At this point I should make it known that I am a debilitatingly self-conscious person. I do not dance –– won’t do it if a future special-lady-friend asks me to, won’t do it at my or anyone else’s wedding, won’t won’t won’t. But goddamn it I can’t stand still. Never before have I been able to let go completely, but this is the closest I’ve gotten. There’s no judgment here, or at least none I can spare a thought for. A lot of the fans I’m pressed up against wear their snapbacks and skinny chinos more assuredly than I do, but not everyone is here to impress others with how cool they are. Take the couple in their forties who could well have come to know this music by way of their children, or the girl next to me with the Garth glasses whose voice cracks when she yells the lyrics. Two guys just in front of me are straight out of Office Space –– battling obstinate printers and filing TPS reports prior to this, no doubt. We all appreciate some angry rap, and have some shit to get out of our systems. Even from my vantage point at the back of the room, I can see that Mike and El are drenched in sweat by the second song –– it must be at least 90 in here now. Weed smoke obscures the ceiling. The strobes would give my mom a migraine with her eyes closed. An injured mosher pushes his way back through the crowd, blood visible through the hand covering his face. I can feel my ears buckling under the sonic pressure, but I can still hear myself speak so I’ll save the worrying for later. I don’t have a girl in my arms like most people here, but Jayke and I went to a bar earlier and he swears a really cute waitress was checking me out, so I’m still coasting on that. I know enough of the words to hold my own, and, with one exception, I don’t shout them out at the wrong time.
Mike and El are one mind in two vessels, and they rap like it, cutting back and forth, filling in the gaps, working the crowd together. Killer Mike is a tall, wide black man from Atlanta; El-P, producer and rapper both, a shorter heavy-set white guy from New York. Their deliveries complement each other, southern inflection and stoner drawl alternating seamlessly. Their verses reflect their own perspectives on everything from police brutality to the finer points of cannabis consumption. They play all the good stuff –– “Oh My Darling Don’t Cry,” “Blockbuster Night, Pt. 1,” “Lie, Cheat, Steal,” “Don’t Speak,” “Talk To Me,” “Legend Has It,” “Stay Gold.” I shout along to “Close Your Eyes (And Count to Fuck):” “We killin' 'em for freedom cause they tortured us for boredom / And even if some good ones die, fuck it, the Lord'll sort 'em.” The ethos of the War on Terror, distilled for the lyrically aware to understand, and dance their asses off to.
I’ve been to shows where I didn’t feel like I belong. RL Grime’s New York crowd too spring-break-in-Daytona-Beach –– young, showy bro-boys and their trophy sweethearts who fuck to bass music more than listen to it. One too many sketchy dudes, obscured by dusk and temporary tinnitus, offered me mushrooms and other stimulants at the Roots Picnic. This is different. Run the Jewels is already something of an anomaly in the hip hop community, uniting black and white, North and South, the archetypes of the enterprising rapper and the bedroom beatmaker. The whole thing is something of a lucky accident –– that these two met, got along, formed a John and Paul musical machine –– but my being here doesn’t feel like one. Can’t a white kid from suburban New Jersey appreciate Run The Jewels and Steve Earle? I don’t see why not. I know what I like when I hear it. I snap my fingers next to each ear, hoping the ringing isn’t catastrophic yet. Still good.
Will Flemer appreciates being college free and hand made canoes. He makes art.