Ramblings 2: An Album I Could Have Liked
This article is long winding. The actual point of the article is very short, but I realized that it would only be interesting for me if I put it in the context of a longer story. It's about a lot of music that I love. I can't tell you what to do, but I can say that the intended way to read this article is by listening to the music linked. You don't have to get through the article all at once.
I try to only link great songs here. On top of that, I can't stress enough that for many of the songs linked, if I give a spiel about the album, I consider the album a near masterpiece. If you like the songs, do make a note to check out the rest of the album at some point. Hell, stop reading and listen to the album and come back later. It was almost painful to not link 8 of my favourite songs for some of these, so there's more where they came from.
A Brief Recall Of My Early Music Days
As a kid, I was always a metalhead. I just thought it was cool, and the complexity and amount of instruments kept the music exciting for me. I think it also had an edginess that appealed to young not-having-the-best-time Spencer. Even now almost exclusively go to metal concerts, finding them by far the most fun. No-one else has energy or mosh pits like that. One of my earliest memories specifically related to finding metal cool was a riff from the first band I saw live: Trivium. I was watching a youtube video of the top 50 metal riffs or something and this one just blew my mind. The band was still young too, which helped add to my excitement. Often people just stick to the proven old-head riffs.
Not having much spending money when I was young, I really had no way of knowing how to find music that people liked to listen to. I had SoundCloud on my phone because it was free, and just listened to random shit. When I heard people liked rap, I started listening to a ton of shitty rap songs. Often, they were bad rappers over more popular beats. I thought these were the more popular songs, because they would name it after where the beat came from. Some of them were pretty good, but a lot of it was forcing myself to try to like something that was in fact shit because I thought other people thought it was good.
Eventually, I discovered actual streaming services, which led to me not only being able to find music that people liked but also me finding my own lane. That lane still varies between mostly rap with some metal, but back then it used to include some dubstep/trap too. I loved the intensity of dubstep and the thematic experience of metal, but the storytelling of rap was unparalleled.
I remember many a late-night walk home from the gym to this song in the SoundCloud days.
A Legendary Rap Duo
As I got more into rap, I heard about a group called Run The Jewels consisting of artists Killer Mike and El-P. These guys are legendary, everyone who talked about them only gave them the highest of praise, and no one said anything bad. There weren't even controversial takes that didn't like them, everyone just loved them. After a while, I gave a song a listen:
I believe this was the first song I heard from them. The lyricism was there. The intensity was there. The thematic experience was there. I already loved Rage Against The Machine, and this seemed like the rap extension of that. The music was hard, the music was angry, and the music was exactly what I wanted and still want.
From there, I dug deeper into their catalogue. At the time, they had 3 albums out. Run the Jewels, Run the Jewels 2, and Run the Jewels 3. I knew I liked some of the songs from 2 and 3, but 1 didn't quite grab my attention the same way. I still enjoyed it, but found the albums that followed it up to be more in line with what I liked at the time. It was newer, and I was young, so it only makes sense.
Run the Jewels 2 is one of the hardest rap albums ever put out, and the first album I'll discuss that I would consider a masterpiece. The beats on songs like Close Your Eyes And Count To Fuck and Blockbuster Night Pt. 1 hit like a freight train, and both Killer Mike and El-P deliver incredibly hard-hitting and concise verses addressing injustice, but they also know when they can just sit back and say some dope shit. One of the standout bars from Killer Mike in this album is an anti-cop bar. “We killin' them for freedom 'cause they torture us for boredom.” Later in the album where Killer Mike talks about crying on the ground when cops come to his house because he's scared to be murdered in front of his kids, giving an idea of the feeling that generated the line. Here are a couple of songs to give you a sense of it:
Next in their discography is Run The Jewels 3. This one is much more polished than the (deliberately) rougher RTJ2, but the soundscape is done incredibly well and it still goes obscenely hard. It is more commercially viable without making any compromises on meaning and intensity. The duo also opens up a much more vulnerable side of them. Songs talk about emotions like fear about their views and how they have put them out and gained popularity, knowing that others have been killed for those views. They constantly quote and refer to leaders of movements like Malcolm X, MLK, and Hampton, all killed by the government when their movements started gaining real momentum. While opening this up, they still refuse to not go obscenely hard. My favourite line on this album has to be El-P just flexing: “Brave men didn't die face down in the Vietnam muck so I could not style on you.” Just absurd. But, no sense in just rambling, go listen for yourself.
Loving these two albums, I started searching for more music like it, but I simply couldn't find any. There was so much great music, but nothing that was like Run The Jewels. They were in their own lane, and no one could even attempt to join them. A knock-off simply wouldn't work, because part of the appeal was that it was so complete. The rappers weren't young and experimenting, they were older and doing what they know they do best. Still switching it up, but staying in the lane they defined. They had experience, they knew what they were talking about, and they knew how to make damn good songs. More than that, they knew how to keep a soundscape to make damn good albums.
Detour One: Early Covid
The next few years I just got more and more into rap music. In 2019 and 2020 I compiled lists ranking every album I listened to, generally aiming for at least 1 new album a week while I was working out. During this phase, COVID would help the process because I was forced to spend much more time inside, and the music kept things fresh.
At some point in this process, I found a new rap group, Griselda, who I'll likely write an article on at some point soon. These guys were all dropping multiple albums per year and they were all great albums. Some were more mellow, some were more aggressive, and some just had more interesting production. Every album was written exclusively about selling coke.
Please note that while I didn't review this album, saving it for a different article I'm thinking of, this album is this fantastic front to back. The music video slaps too.
While getting into Griselda, something else was happening. America had another streak of cops killing black people. The outcry rose with each murder until it burst into widespread protests and riots with the killing of George Floyd. Being early COVID my sister was still in the hospital. I was at home in the suburbs generally keeping myself safe and helping around the house. When visiting the hospital, I saw people outside protesting every day. There were calls to defund the police. Police help stop crime, don't they? Some of the people saying this were pretty smart. There was something I didn't know. Clearly, a lot of this stuff was about racial issues, which I knew existed, but not in any real detail. It was time for me to start figuring some things out.
I had finished the first book that I read during COVID, my return to reading after a long break. The book, Shantaram, was absolutely amazing, and I was hooked back intoto books. I needed the next thing, so now was my opportunity to really learn. I also wanted something exciting. My eye turned to the civil rights movement. MLK seemed good, but another one caught my eye. The Autobiography of Malcolm X. Malcolm X was a big part of the movement, but wasn't he not good or something? I bought an audiobook, and I went in.
Bringing It Back
The book was absolutely amazing. Life-changingly amazing. Not only did I get a better idea of the reality of the history of black people in America, but I also learned that much of what they were trying to fix during the civil rights movement has not been fixed at all. Many of the problems still exist openly, not even just through specific metrics. That was what people were in the streets trying to change right now.
I also learned that the history we are taught did not happen. Malcolm X was not this insane guy. Everything he did was frankly an incredibly reasonable reaction to the world as it existed around him. Even things which seem strange now, like the Nation of Islam, were founded in large part by Malcolm X as a direct response to how black people were treated. This was a new worldview for me. If I wanted to understand the present, I needed to understand history. Not just a vague semblance of history, but the reality for people who actually existed, dare I connect that to perspective.
One thing really stood out to me. Malcolm X, after going to Mecca, really changed a lot. He saw a way forward for everyone. At this point, he started pushing for unionization and more socialist ideas. This was at the end of the last chapter before he was killed.
“They murdered X and tried to blame it on Islam” – Wake Up – Rage Against The Machine I also notice this now gets a warning for harmful content when I open it
Riots were happening. Black Lives Matter was going crazy. People were angry. I was angry. A rap duo known for making very aggressive music was about to drop an album.
Run The Jewels 4
Before the expected drop date, Run The Jewels dropped their fourth album. You'll never guess what they called it.
The BLM protests were ramping up, and they said the people should just have the music. The album would go on to receive widespread critical acclaim, even getting a Grammy nomination, though it didn't win. Initially, I thought it was really good. The rapping was top tier and the lyrical content was some of the most concise and heavy hitting I had heard. The production on the album didn't initially click for me, however. I still think that it is missing a little bit of something the previous two albums had. The sound was modernized a bit, I think for more commercial audiences, which it gained. The songs are fantastic, but I felt like the consistency of a specific soundscape as a theme was less coherent. Overall, still, a great album that I would highly recommend listening to.
The timing of the release of the album, the growing reputation of the duo, and the content of the album put it at the forefront of the protests. Walking In The Snow, for example, has a notable verse where El-P lets Killer Mike take center stage and talk about cops killing people by kneeling on their necks. If I recall, the claim was that the verse was already recorded previous to the killing of George Floyd and was related to another similar killing, but I have no real source on that. The album spent much of its time talking about racism, prison abolition, police brutality, and trying to be a revolutionary despite also trying to live in the current system. All of these were specific to the struggles of those taking to the streets.
Being a face of the movement, Killer Mike was invited onto the news to speak for all the people who had taken to the streets and were protesting for a better world. He had just released an album about his hatred of cops and the system, historical revolutionaries, and how we need to overthrow the system to change it.
Killer Mike told everyone to go home.
Detour Two: The Old Shit
I kept listening to the album and over time gained more of an appreciation for the production, but a different album really stood out at the time. Alfredo by Freddie Gibbs and The Alchemist. That album just had obscene chemistry, both were perfectly dialed in, and it was easily the album of the year in my books. I knew Gibbs from some of his older work. He was a coke rapper, similar to Griselda, and is still going strong after being in the game and dropping albums consistently for 20 years.
That got me thinking I should listen to some of the older music from El-P and Killer Mike. I already had listened to a few songs, but it was about time to really digest all of the projects. If I was so invested, I should at least know where it all came from.
El-P is where I started.
Fantastic Damage was El-P's first studio album, produced and rapped by him. This album is absolutely insane. From the opening track, you start to realize that half of these instruments just aren't fully tuned. He was recording everything on broken equipment and succeeding massively despite it. While recording this album he was living in shit conditions in New York and there were so many sirens that many songs were actually made to sound good when there are sirens in the background. The album is unrefined and incredibly crude. Especially being from the early 2000s, it has some edginess and anxiety connected to being anti-American imperialism caught in the immediate cultural reaction to 9/11. It is El-P at his darkest and his most raw but is widely considered a classic in backpack rap.
Cancer 4 Cure Is El-P's third album, and the second I listened to because they are out of order on some streaming services. This one is far more polished and much more modern and goes insanely hard. This album has bangers lined up after bangers lined up after bangers, and the rapping is top notch too. This one received less critical love than El-P's other albums due to his rapping being much less intense, but it is still on point. This album might stand a chance of being able to be played for other people. This album goes hard, and I absolutely love it.
I'll Sleep When You're Dead was the last album to listen to and the second of El-P's albums. This one is crazy. It seems to blend the aggressive cadence and production of his first album with some of the refinedness of his third. Right off the bat, with Tasmanian Pain Coaster, you get introduced to this atmosphere in production that manages to stretch the entire album. He is aggressively anti-war in some of the most insane songs I have ever heard like No Sirs. The off-kilter production hits this perfect point on songs like The Overly Dramatic Truth where he manages to put together a maximalist soundscape but has each sound so clear, creating something much greater than the sum of its parts (despite some edginess which may not be everyone's cup of tea). He brings together an incredibly class-conscious song in The League Of Extraordinary Nobodies that feels incredibly honest not just to the general dynamic, but also to the feel and experience of trying to reach out to rich people. This is included with (maybe not for the club) bangers like Flyentology and Drive. This is easily one of my favourite albums of all time, and I would seriously recommend giving it a shot or two knowing that it will be an extremely difficult listen.
I was the person who listened to El-P second most of anyone on a streaming service that I only joined halfway through the year. I loved all three of his studio release albums, so I decided to search for more. El-P also has some older songs/projects that I listened to. First I found a song Patriotism from an old project Soundbombing 2. The song is wild and really spits some politics from a young and disenfranchised El-P. Next, I found a project called High Water he did with a jazz group The Blue Series Continuum. This is a low-key record he helped produce, and while it isn't anything particularly crazy, I still listen to it here and there when I'm looking for something lower-key. It's a pretty enjoyable listen.
Before Run The Jewels, El-P was part of some other groups he dropped albums with. One is Company Flow where he dropped a record widely regarded as a classic called Funcrusher Plus. El-P produced this album but does have some verses on it. His sound is very different from now, or even his own albums, but you can get a feel for his production roots if you so desire. The feel of the album is also much more dated. Not bad, but if you're not into' older hip-hop or boom-bap you probably won't get too into it. He also did the production on The Cold Vein by Cannibal Ox, a hip-hop duo out of New York, back in 2001. This is also widely regarded as a classic and has a much bigger name for itself in the core hip-hop community. I listened to these albums around the same time a few times each, and while I didn't love them, they led my deeper dive into older hip hop where I've really learned to appreciate it. Now that I do love older hip-hop much more, I might revisit them soon.
For some optional listening:
Killer Mike's old work I listened to much less thoroughly.
First I listened to the obvious choice: an album he made with El-P on production. R.A.P Music. This album goes insanely hard, and the chemistry was actually so good that it led to the formation of Run The Jewels. The beats are aggressive and insane. Killer Mike's rapping matches it. His chops here really show why Kendrick Lamar said “if people really liked rapping Killer Mike would be platinum.” He manages a ton of charisma through songs that range from a funny story to actively murdering cops. This album is widely regarded as Killer Mike's best, he spits nonstop from front to back, and some songs go down easily as some of the greatest rap songs of all time.
From this point, I knew of a couple other older Killer Mike songs. One was Ready Set Go off of Bangx3, so I gave that a listen and it was amazing. Killer Mike shows himself as a rapper's rapper and he has some hysterical stories that he goes on to tell. The beats are really good, but starting at R.A.P Music may have been a mistake because going from a phenomenal album to a really good album still manages to feel like a downgrade. I revisit this here and there and generally have a really good time.
The next and final older album I have listened to a decent amount from Killer Mike is Pl3dge. This is where I really solidified most of my ideas of Killer Mike. He is an A-grade rapper and has been for a while, and likely will continue to do so. He is a rapper's rapper. He raps insanely well and has charm, flows, and lyricism that most will never see on their best album. That being said, that is what he does. El-P has given me something truly crazy in that every single album was a completely different experience. Killer Mike may not do that whole sonic experience every time, but I can know for sure I'm about to get some awesome raps. This has a lot of great songs, and potentially my favourite non-El-P related Killer Mike song in:
Last Detour, Much More Recent (in my life)
So while I was on old music I decided to listen around a bit. I'll restrain myself to just one Atlanta-based rap duo: Outkast, which is a duo of rappers Andre 3000 and Big Boi. I knew Outkast was really good and widely called the best rap duo of all time, but despite knowing some songs, I had never given them a full album listen.
I first listened to what is still my favourite album from them, Aquemini while on a long bike ride. This shit took me on a trip. I listened to it because everyone credits Stankonia as their best but I wanted deeper cuts first. This album blew me away. The rapping and storytelling are top-of-the-line. The chemistry between 3k and Big Boi is unreal. To top it off, the production is incredibly creative and stands out in a field of high creativity that was coming out at the time. To this day, it remains my favourite Outkast album of all time, and in their discography, as it turns out, it is widely regarded as their best rap-specific album for old-heads who like when they stick more strictly to rapping.
From here I moved to an oldie. Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik. This is much more noticeably an older song, and took place at a time where that was clear. Atlanta had still not made itself distinct from other musical places. This was Outkast's big start, and has some of my favourite songs from them, but it does show some age.
We've now visited 5 different records that are from Atlanta and prominent. If you consider what you already know of Outkast (Mr. Jackson, Hey Ya!), we could call it 6. In 2016, trap would come out as the dominant soundscape, but that would also become a wider hip-hop landscape than remain spatial. Atlanta is a place that has been more experimental and flamboyant. This creates some massive highlights, but sacrifices some identity through consistency in its sounds like the west coast with its bass lines or New York with boom-bap.
Back To RTJ
That trap soundscape happened at the same time that Killer Mike linked up with El-P. Killer Mike, from Atlanta, was not a part of that wave. Instead, we were getting Run The Jewels, aka RTJ1, which I got back to after listening to Outkast, realizing that Big Boi was on Banana Clipper. Turns out this album fucking rocks. El-P goes in on production, keeping the raw feeling while creating a great soundscape for their first duo album. What I wasn't able to appreciate initially due its rough style, after listening to older music, I was able to come around and really enjoy everything here. The production, while not as layered as the later RTJ albums, still has a whole lot going for it, both in intensity and creativity. The duo, while still refining how RTJ would work together, absolutely nailed their ability to seamlessly trade bars and glide over the El-P production. This may not be as brutal as the beats on RTJ2 or as layered as RTJ3, but it is still amazing, and a return to it gave me more of my favourites.
Run The Jewels – Run The Jewels – Run The Jewels
A Christmas Fucking Miracle This one has probably my favourite El-P verse of all time.
Starting To Notice Something
In the last song, A Christmas Fucking Miracle, I picked up on a line from Killer Mike. “Planned Parenthood helping plan miscarriages but I'm lucky mommy already had a narrative.” This line stuck with me for a while. With my love for Christmas songs that are actually good and this containing potentially El-P's best verse, having something that puts me off stood out. Especially for the black radical who consistently raps about how things like pregnancy can ruin lives and how hard it can be for women, it seemed odd to me that he would take the reactionary right wing point. It makes logical sense, he is at least somewhat religious, he's a guy, he's doing well, and he's happy to be alive, but why pose it as the antagonism? Why not just say my mom made the right choice given a tough situation of a teenage pregnancy instead of throwing shade at planned parenthood? This one confused me, but hey, sometimes I be disagreeing with people, so I let it go and continued just enjoying the music.
Then came the first single for his new album rollout: Run. Being the lead single for Michael, this is supposed to show what Killer Mike has been cooking. It opens up with Dave Chapelle, who had recently gone through a big TERF scandal. It's just a spoken-word thing that anyone could have done. Given Killer Mike's very in-your-face politics it seemed odd that he would pick Dave Chapelle as the person to do the speech instead of really almost anyone else at that moment, but hey, sometimes people disagree and maybe Dave has been his friend for a while, so I moved on.
The song wasn't awesome for another reason too. The politics, or the kind of weird lack of it. It starts off with a politically charged message and the hook matches this vibe. The verses come, and it quickly dissolves into flexing wealth without that much more. Wherever it seems to start back up, the message is near instantly squandered. Don't get me wrong, the song isn't bad, it's good, but it just felt like it could have been – and should have been – much more.
At this point, it seemed that the radical image of Killer Mike had turned out to be a little less solid.
Michael
Killer Mike's album came out. His delivery and rapping are insanely good. There are the hard songs. There are personal songs. He comes through with an incredibly Atlanta soundscape that has permeated many albums but made for few good full albums: gospel. He seems to be trying to really lead the way to show that it is a valuable and rich sound; that it can be done in a way that blends with different sounds, being powerful and diverse. This album is truly phenomenal if you're into rap, and well worth a listen to just about any fan of his work, or rap in general. For many, this will be the album of the year, I am sure.
I can't get into it. This happens for albums all the time. I don't get an album, or it just falls a bit flat but I can tell there's something there. Usually, I set it aside to revisit on another day, knowing that it will likely have its time, or maybe the album just isn't for me. This one, on the other hand, I do get, but I think the issue is something else.
Just 2 lines.
1. > Niggas talk to me about that woke-ass shit (Yeah) > Same niggas walkin' on some broke-ass shit > You see, your words ain't worth no money, I ain't spoke back, bitch > All of you niggas hang together on some Brokeback shit
2. > Niggas wanna move like rap niggas, me, I wanna move like Rob Smith > Fuck that rap and trap shit, I'm a landlord, bitch, pay rent, pay rent
The first one calls his fans woke, broke, and gay. For someone who is a revolutionary, yes? I figured that was a large part of your target market? The second cites a black billionaire as inspiration then turns to something I didn't even think could happen: landlord rap.
I can't really say much more about the album than this. It should be great from almost every single angle, but for me, the entire experience is so tainted by these two lines that I can't even listen to the rest without thinking about them. That's what this article is about. It's all I really had to say, this whole thing could have been 1 paragraph.
My Frustrations
When I read Malcolm X, he warned multiple times of a certain type of black man who will come into the movement as a black man but will always make decisions in favour of the status quo, reinforcing the anti-civil rights movement. This was one of the things Malcolm X stayed looking out for most, alongside the (still continuing) Nation Of Islam. They have no margin of error for people who are in it to sabotage their movement. You can be in a different stream of the movement, but the leadership should be 100% committed. He consistently said that if a white person existed in the leadership for a demonstration of civil rights it was already over. Consistently, this happened. Consistently, the demonstrations were shut down as soon as they got close to actually getting at something valuable.
Malcolm X mellowed down after he visited Mecca, and learned that you could be more accepting of more people, but was still much more adamant about ensuring the commitment than most. This was my literary introduction to leftism, and as such I think a caution about the movement being sabotaged has been taken to the core of my ideology. The movement needs to be aware of it, especially while trying to bring other people along for the ride.
I think this makes me particularly nervous when it comes to Killer Mike. He is a big name and is considered a legend in hip-hop. He constantly talks about various major black figureheads and how he ideologically continues what they were standing for. He constantly brings up leftist talking points and tells stories that leftists generally identify with. Yet, when push comes to shove, he seems to cave. I think he could be a good ally if he backed the movement, but I can no longer trust him to lead, which is what he seems like he aesthetically attempts to do.
The peak of this to me is the bank Killer Mike so called owns: Greenwood Bank. “Banking For The Culture.” This is pitched as being a bank that will help black people with their needs, and it's black owned, so black people will benefit from more business. More representation is good right? It isn't a real bank. It is an app that acts as a front for Coastal Banking Solutions. An actual bank. Also, a white-owned bank. It falls into the ultimate pitfall of black capitalism: that there are two ways it tends to succeed. One is reliance on white capital. The other is exploitation of black working people. When he asks you to buy into it, he is asking you to buy something HE OWNS. it will profit him, not the community. It will not solve the underlying issues, but it might help a few black capitalists in the process.
There was also some extra drama surrounding Killer Mike doing an interview where he talked a bunch about the “bootstraps” thing. His advice to impoverished black Americans was to “live below your means” and “invest in property”. Telling poor people to live below their means is funny because they already do, they are forced to. Telling them to invest in property just comes as more out of touch because property as an investment is directly related to increasing the cost of living. This is Killer Mike. “Kill Your Masters” Killer Mike.
Why Would I Expect Different?
Killer Mike's music has a long history of being about getting the bag as well as revolutionary politics. Killer Mike grew up in a harsh environment (at least from the stories he tells) and has been able to get out. Killer Mike has seen reward for his extremely hard work and talent. Killer Mike has been able to successfully sell his views on the world and gain larger support. He has succeeded massively in this system, it only makes sense that to some degree, he would back it. I can't really expect someone not to in that position, it's only human. Something works for you, you made it, if other people find what works for them, they might be able to make it too. Sure there's some luck involved but no system is perfect.
Maybe I expect too much. Maybe he is a revolutionary trapped in the system and, alongside a couple of slip-ups, is genuinely trying to give advice and trying to help people survive the system until it changes. Maybe I expect too much perfection from idols. Maybe he's only human, navigating an extremely complicated world that he doesn't agree with as well as any human can. Maybe it just makes me paranoid because I have looked up to him for a long time and I'm in a phase of skepticism towards people I have spent a long time respecting.
The politics of his music matters, and his politics matter too. It affected my enjoyment of his music in a positive way before, and it is affecting my enjoyment of his music in a negative way now. Maybe I can get over it. Maybe I don't need to. Hopefully, if he continues to put out good music, I can get into it again in the future. Maybe it will contain more of the politics I do like. Maybe that politics will help grow and strengthen the music. Maybe having that politics performs my anti-capitalism for me. Either way, there's a lot of good music I can listen to.
Hopefully, this article gave you guys some more good music to listen to.
♩ ♪ ♫ ♬ ♭ ♮ ♯ 🎼 🎵 🎶 ♬ ♭ ♮ ♯ 🎼 ♩ ♪ ♫ ♬ 🎵 🎶♪ 🎵 🎶♫ ♬ ♭
Oncle Spencer