Album review: Run the Jewels, Run the Jewels 3

A late career alliance between two rappers deemed over the hill, Run the Jewels has blossomed into the most fascinating hip-hop collaboration of the age. El-P and Killer Mike were in their mid-30s – advanced old age in rap years – when they first crossed one another’s path six years ago. But what started as a side-project between artists on the margins of their genre quickly turned into an irresistible meeting of minds, with the duo bringing their “alternative” rhymes firmly into the mainstream with a brace of critically lauded albums.

Moreover, they’ve done so with a humour which sets them apart in a milieu where, from Kendrick to Kanye, po-facedness is regarded as a badge of authenticity – what other act would follow through on a promise to fans to release a remix record in which the instruments were replaced by sampled cats, as El-P and Killer Mike did with 2015’s Meow The Jewels?

In the 18 months since that project, Mike has become a vocal supporter of left wing American Democratic party presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, whom he interviewed for Rolling Stone and campaigned for in African American communities (apparently it came as a relief to Sanders that “Killer” Mike had not in fact served time for homicide).

So it’s a surprise that social unrest takes a back seat on Run the Jewels 3, which is political only in the abstract sense of championing musical diversity. Instead, El-P and Mike are interested mostly in riotous beats and melodies that seize you by the cuff without quite beating you over the head.

An intense clatter of wordplay characterises ‘Don’t Get Captured’ and the as-furious-as-it-sounds ‘A Report to the Shareholders/ Kill Your Masters’. Amid the tumult are quiet pleasures, also, such as Kamasi Washington’s sax runs on Thursday ‘In The Danger Room’. Lyrically, too, they veer from playful to surreal (“Oompa-loompas, I’ll shoot a tune atcha medullas,” spits El-P at one point) and all the way back again. Third time out, this is a triumph to cherish.