Pushkin. It's been a little over nine months since Rick Rubin last interviewed Killer Mike and LP for the show. Last time they spoke, Run the Jewels were finishing up their fourth album at Rick Studio, Shangha Law, and since then, the world's been upside down, dealing with the pandemic, social unrest, and a racial reckoning Unlike anything we've seen in the last couple of decades. This album feels like a reflection of all of that. Killer Mike and LP have been raw since day one, making a career rapping about the hypocrisy and injustice that a lot of other people are just now waking up to. As Rick says, it makes the new album sound almost prophetic. But as you'll hear them say, they never set out to make protest songs or the soundtrack for twenty twenty. They just speak their truth, and sometimes that truth is ugly and dark, but can also be funny and at times downright joyous. This is easily my favorite release of the year so far. This is broken record Liner notes for the digital age. I'm justin Richmond. Rick and Run the Jewels had a lot to talk about. We wanted this one to breathe a little bit to give Killer, Mike and Elfie time to really dig into the making of the new album and the state of the world. Here's Rick Rubin with Run the Jewels. Let's talk about the album. Hell yeah, before you started, was there any overarching principle in mind going into the fourth album? Yeah, it had to be jamming and uh and it had to be a retired to aggression. Yeah, no doubt. I think we just knew that we wanted this record too. We wanted it to be a shotgun blast man. We wanted it to be fire and like you said, the other one was like water, it was blue, it was you know, it was tapping in some sadness that we both like naturally kind of tapped into. And I don't think we felt that way this time. I think we felt like ready to kind of like brand new again. I think we felt ready to rot, crush, kill, destroy, like and I think that it was sort of unspoken. Me and Mike don't really talk too much about this ship, but we but I remember I sort of one of the first sessions that we had, I started playing him some of the music that I had been making to play him because that's what I do. I go and I make a bunch of music, and I kind of picked the things that I think are you know, worthy of both of us jumping on and playing from Mike see how he responds. And one of the first things I played him was the thing that I wanted the most for him to like, which was their first song on album, Yankee and the Brave, which in a lot of ways was a return to a lot of the older sort of production techniques that I used to use coming up. I was using, you know, using samplers and breaks and and kind of filtered through, you know, a new understanding of production that had I had gotten to through the years of really understanding frequency at low end and all of the things that really matter when you're you're bumping some shit in the system. But I was just praying that Mike got it, you know what I mean, like that Mike got what I wanted out of that spirit, And of course he did immediately, and he immediately kind of like grinned and was like, oh, yeah, this is this is this is the first jam, you know what I mean. And we recorded that jam and who and oh La La same day too, in one day, and and I remember even playing the Ship for you actually, where I was like, yeah, we don't have much, but I think we have like the first like two songs and and and even you were like, yeah, those are the first two songs, um right, But yeah it was. It was undeniable lot of lights. And it was weird though, because that's not what normally happens. It's usually like you do a bunch of jams and then you figure out the order. And this one like really sort of wrote itself pretty quickly, like at least the first half of the record seemed to like right himself. So I think we just wanted to be lean and mean and and and you know, fucking and carrying flamethrowers. On that first track, do you remember what came first lyrically? That was Mike back at it and at it like that whole pattern. I was like, oh shit, Mike is Mike is flipping on cats. Like immediately he set the tone of that ship. And that was that to me, that just set the tone for the album. Yeah, that that line had been in my mind, like you're that back at it like a crack at it, mister Black, And that that had been in my mind like a year, like like, let's fuck it up. I'm Mike Tyson. You know what I'm saying. I'm I believe in starting hard, coming out swinging. Yeah, ell Is Ell is like Mayweather esque in that he has the ability to finish. His thoughts are finishing the beautiful, Like I don't care how well you think you did against Floyd. He gonna take, you know, twelve rounds and your weakness is gonna show because his defense is penetrable. So but me, I'm coming in, ducking, moving side to side, trying to knock your fucking head off. So I had wanted to that. I wanted that to be the first line on an album since we finished the last album. You know, after I'm done with like an album. It for me, it's like I'm already thinking that the next Like watching that Michael Jordan's shit like really helped me understand that I'm not insane. In my mind, everybody's sleeping on me. I don't give a fuck if they're not sleeping on me, they're sleeping on me. So that's what I tell myself to get myself ready. And I think that's part of the reason I'm always leaned toward aggressive rapping. You know what I'm saying, Even when I'm happy, it can sound aggressive. So for me, yeah, I'm like, man, you motherfucker's still don't get how adult Run the Jewels is and hear the fuck we go again, And I'm gonna feel like that every run of Jews record because I don't never want to get complacent, and I don't never want to get compliant to whatever the new rule the sound is. I always want to push. I was gonna say there were specific lines in that song that when we listened to them in the studio I loved them. But now when they came out in the world, it almost seems like psychic mind reading, Like it's it's really incredible, how in the moment the lyrics sound like they're being written about what's happening. But I heard them before it was happening, and at that time I would say I didn't feel any threat of it happening. If it was, it's remarkable, and that was not long ago. How the energy shifted. Mike, what do you where do you think that comes from? I think that the times are forever in always, and you know, the oligarchs of always making slaves of us were always resisting. Rome would have crushed, crumbled two hundred years prior and had it not been the circle for the circus. If there is no entertainment, if there is no distraction, if there is no what is the food weekly or what is the next fucking app If none of that happens, and you're left to see the world for what it really raw is. We're in a fucking jungle all the time now. Because I represent a group of people that happen to be on the lowest run of that ladder in the most brutal capitalistic system in the world, we always see the jungle. Even though you can distract yourself with drugs and drinking and fun, and you know, even in all distractions aren't bad. Sometimes you just focus in on you and your family. The jungle still is fucking going on, And I think that what you know, for me, it's like everybody start paying attention at the exact same time. So the lyrics that I've been wrapping for seven I met with the Black Panthers yesterday, very good meeting. A lot of these people are in their seventies and have given over fifty years of their life to the revolution and the struggle for the proletariat to overcome you know what we are overcoming. And you know, the first thing I said, besides thanking them for putting me next to cardib in our open letter, was Hey, I've been waiting for you guys to call me seventeen years, and I've actively been shouting y'all out. I have been representing for people like me two New Shapur Asida Shapur, you know, include them and out limits to people like Nni Pelter in the American Indian Movement and things of that nature. So I'm like, I'm fucking glad that you no longer look at rappers is simply the minstrual class to be used by you or the other side to repeat. But I'm glad you're engaging me as an organizer because for me, that's what this ship is about. Music and art represent the times when Nina Simons as an artist duty to represent the time. So I'm glad that the words hit people, but they're always true. Before Eric Garner, I can't breathe. It is true. Post Eric Garner, I can't breathe. It is true. And unless we do something to to resist the state and it's tearing it over us, using authoritarian using our own citizens, fellow citizens of authority figures to the most brutal extent. Then those songs will always be relevant. It's just when the people choose to pay attention, and that that's the difference. There is no going to the movies, There is no you know, distracting yourself from what's going on right now, because everybody's the fucking size. So you know, I'm glad they got it. So if the jungle is ongoing, can you be optimistic? Absolutely? Why would you be? You know? Why? Why? Why deny yourself happiness in the midst of it? You know, I don't, I don't know. All I know is for four hundred and one years, my people have been here, and it's been a hellacious four hundred and one years. And for four hundred and one years they have resisted, and for four one hundred and one years they have found joy in times of brutal sadness. My grandparents, you know, I remember asking my grandmother. You know, I'm a young pocass kid. We raised my grandparents, you know, me and my sisters we don't get air Jordan's, but you know, what matters to get the sixty dollars, nikes at Marshall, so our whole shit. We don't think we're rich. We don't understand how rich we are. Until one day we asked our grandmother, what did you get for Christmas? Now, my grandmother's from a landowning family. They have a farm, but they're still working a farm. They wear potato sack dresses, and she said, we'd be lucky to get potato sack drawls and a bag of fruit. And I'm thinking bag of fucking brute for Christmas underwear, Like what the fuck kind of Untie Linda underwear? Given ass? Shit is this? And my grandfather said she what Christmas? I had two sisters and I had to work, and I was in the third grade, and I'm thinking, you're nine in the third grade. There is no such thing as Christmas for him, and there has never been until he starts a family and his wife and his children and grandchildren. But I realized then that what was or I realized then more and more now that happiness is not Currently are always defined by the wows of the jungle coming on us. Even if you're on a hunt, you're gonna find time to laugh, even if you're being hunted and you evadue capture, You're gonna find time to last. Enjoy is the greatest anecdote for pain I have seen in the last two years, you know, three or four years, my mother died via a telephone. I've seen a young niece of my wife and I is dies cancer and never lost their joy through it all, you know what I'm saying. So in the jungle, that's really all you have. The ability to love, the ability to comfort one another, to experience joy and the euphoria of surviving together. There's there's you know, as an adrenaline junkie. You know, my man Carlos, who's an amazing comedian, a wild and out said man. Being black is dangerous and count of fun as fuck. So I think the people, for regular people, the jungle is dangerous, it is wild, but it's it's it's at times you've got a smile because you know you want a crap, but it's fun as fun. That's one of the things about Run the Jewels to me, that's so beautiful that because these records are funny and joyous, and these records aren't hopeless, You're not You're not talking to two dudes who have lost hope. You're hearing two dudes fighting for their hope. You're hearing two dudes, you know, giving their take on hope. Hope doesn't mean blindness, Hope doesn't mean unawareness. You know, those two things are not, you know, codependent. And I love the fact that we could make a record that is intense at times and speaks to, you know, the shit that's going on in a real way that is painful, but doesn't leave you feeling drained and depressed, and doesn't leave you feeling hurt. It leaves you feeling hopefully energized and excited. Um and in a typical way not you know, I think the people underestimate the value of honesty, you know, and how invigorating that could be, like like how energetic honesty can be. The record ending the way that it ended was important, you know, the record ending like we're in front of a firing squad and we are giving our summation of what makes us us and the reason why we do what we do in the form of sort of relating it back to personal stories about the women in our lives and some of the inspiration and some of the struggle that that sort of leads us to who we are, and then the last line is fuck you two and and then you get into Yankee and the Brave and Yankee and the Brave Is this stupid TV show via the nineteen early nineteen eighties like dutsa Hazard or night Rider and the Rascally you know, the rascal anti heroes somehow escape with their lives and then sped off together in a in a bureau grant National, you know, to smoke more weed and fucko and and and and and fight another day. And that, to me is always the reason why I'm grateful that my partnership but Mike exists because I think that I went I'd struggled for a long time to find that type of voice, and I needed a friend to help me, to help me have that type of voice where I wanted to my music in the way that I used to write it could. It was often very heavy. But I don't think I always nailed I don't think I always nailed the energy of hope, you know what I mean. I don't think and I don't think hope has to be a statement and you don't have to say everything might be okay. So that's not that's not hope. That's that's delusion um or that's you know, wishful thinking, not necessarily delusion. Maybe it's just wishful thinking. But you don't have to say that. You just have to convey a spirit of fighting another day, I think, and that's something that might help round out for me. Like I'm I listened to some of my earlier music and while I'm proud of it, the reason why I love Being and Run the Jewels as an artist now is because it took our friendship to find this other space, you know what I mean, which is like, yeah, okay, you know what, I can actually talk about this stuff. But there's another zone. There's another way to talk about this shit that doesn't leave, that doesn't leave you feeling beat down. It feels more of a more evolved position, is what it feels like. I think. So, I mean, I think that our friendship has evolved us as artists. It's really interesting when you have someone who makes where you find that pocket where that where someone else and their ideas, although strictly their ideas and strictly their personality, it's nothing that you would ever think of, right, but yet somehow they really do kind of complete your you know, your personality as an artist, it allows you to play your position stronger. It allows you to be who you are strong it because you know that there's a balance, you know, and it allows you to represent certain things that in a different way that you couldn't say, you know, like I can't. I can't say the stuff that might says. It's not it's not my life, it's not my personality, it's not who. But but I can stand in it. I can stand with it, and I can show up for it, you know, and and and and be myself and and it. You know, in that regard, it's like, um, it's really refreshing for me. And that's why I keep doing it. It makes it a strong collaboration and the fact that you're both so different but together make something that's bigger than the individual. It's it's really cool, right exactly. We'll be back with Run the Jewels after quick break. We're back with Rick and Run the Jewels. We never talked about this before, but how did the band? How did the band start? I know we're mainly talking about the new album that because we just talked so recently, But last time we talk we didn't really get into how you guys started doing this together. Well, I did. I produced Mike's album Rap Music, and that was the first project we did together, and I was just magic. I think we both were just just loved that and it just felt really, really great. I definitely recognized way before Elle, this is a marriage made in heaven. And I say that in a good way, like like like the world had beat my buddy up. Man, it had been some assholes out there of my main But I'm just hopelessly optimistic and I'm a romantic and I knew the first three beats Elle ever played me that for the rest of my career, this motherfucker's gonna be producing me. And after the first time we went out on the road together, it's run the Jewels Word and my manager for the party managing Circle Joe's City right next to me. When I got off the buff, Joe was like, so, what we're gonna do now? You give back to solo album like asps a fucking lutely not I'm gonna rap group like And that was dick like for me. That was it's nothing else to say, Like I loved his dude as a human being. He smoked cigarettes, but I walked away and then I come back. I love his his want for good, even on his meanness. Honrea's day, it is about you know, he wants, he wants everything to be okay. Like Ell is not as cynical as people would have thought. The LP you know was, But the motherfucker was just genuine and dope and he made the illest makes the illest shit ever. And I'm just like, as a rap, as a kid who grew up on deaf jam, no ass kissing, how could you not want to make the illest shit ever? Every time? Like I still remember when the fuck I went and picked up the Unbad album and with my own money by myself. That's how LP beats made me feel every time I rapped. So for me, I was just like, this is it and all had definitely by it. After the first six months albums this we just knew we're going to be making records. But the group together, I think ultimately because of the Rap Music Album, which is classic, and thank thank God for Jason DeMarco putting us together. But I think Jason DeMarco, who I always get credit to, is the wizard in this movie. He's the person that saw from a beat and rap perspective, but from a personality respective perspective that we could potentially lock in. Because when I called him excited going crazy the first album, it's just rap music, he said, I was hoping you guys would like each other. And you say that because I was like, Jason, he has to produced album, and Jason was like, I'm going to figure it out. So in my mind's eye, if this is the illustrated novel, like Jason literally is mister Glass, you know, his job was to pull the superhero out of both of us and put us together and say and say, well here it is, you know what I mean. So it's funny though, because and that's all true, but the way they run the Jewels started was way more accidental because even though we had already been that's the origin story of us meeting. I already had plans for you, man, I had policten when you called me to do the mixtape. And I've never said this to you when you called me to do a mixtape. When when you was like, I gotta turn the mixtape I write slow, Joe was like, you're gonna go up there, you just gonna do it. An I was like I don't give a fuck. I say, I'm gonna get back on his shit. It's something there. I told you. I said it's something there based off UTA. I'm just like I'm supposed to be rapping. I would have wrapped twenty albums with you for free. Said that I didn't give a fuck. I really and I remember you're saying to beyo, Mike, there's no money. He was like, I already have. I I don't give a shit. I just wanted to because I knew the more we did it together, the better the chances of us keeping doing it together was. And I was in love, Like if I compared it to my to my relationship, was saying to my wife at that point, even though I was still a line cheap dog. The first year, I just knew I was in love. I was just like, this is who the fuck Mary. So even if I would have went and did ten other projects with other producers at that point, I never wanted to be produceduced by anybody in that way, but LP so out there. Yeah. It's one of the things that's really unique for you guys in today's world is, first of all, you're a rap group. There's almost none and you're a rap group that has a singular production style. Nobody, not even individual rappers have that anymore. Nobody is coming from one place production style. It's always a lot of voices musically on every on every album. So this is a very unique throwback situation. Yet it sounds yet it sounds super modern at the same time. It's it's like traditional and cutting edge mixed in one. But again, but yeah, we but we we me and mine both grew up on all of the ship from your error that you were involved in, and that's how that stuff was and that's and that's how and so you know, we I think I'll talk about this a lot, but like our our age and our reference point has been utilized for us as a as a weapon to some degree, because we have a reference that at this point, there's enough time between that era and now where there aren't that many people who are active, like really on the cutting edge right now who legitimately have that reference, like you know, like who legitimately you know, know what it was like to listen to in Control Volume one with Marlon Mall when it first came out, you know what I mean. And the first Posse wreck, the first posse Cut album where a producer was saying, I'm producing this and I'm putting different voices together. There are people who don't remember what it was like to listen to Public Enemy when they came out, and or to BDP and understand. You know that people had the ability to craft the sound. You know, ultramagnetic mcs, you know, said said g also for BDP. But like we're not too rapper is looking for being. This is a musical operation like it. You know, we have a sound, and you know it's based in the sound that that I created, but it is evolved because of our partnership. Like the reason why I run the Jewels sounds the way it does now as opposed to like what I was making for my own shit is because when I knew when I got one Mike, I'm a producer. So I was like, well, I need I need to get out of my way or get out of Mike's way in a sense, when I was like, all right, I'm gonna produce Mike's whole album, I need to open up and be and know and understand and open up and what I do in reference to who Mike is and what his roots are too, you know what I mean. So that added like that, that added like a bounce, that added like and you know another element of it because I wanted to give Mike the best platform to be able to do everything that he was like really in the pocket on and I transferred over to Run the Jewels and it built that's you know, that ended up building that sounds. So the real foundation of Run the Jewels production is a real combination of of influences to a degree as as seen through me, you know what I mean, as filtered through me and like with me, Like the reason I'm not out there producing for a bunch of other people is because I'm in Run the Jewels, Like I don't, I don't have a better group to produce for it than Run the Jewels. Like that's for me, That's what I want to do because Mike always trusted me, like and that was one of them. That was I think one of the deciding factors for me as a as a as an artist to be like, yeah, I'm gonna run with this dude, because he gave me a gift that that some people don't really want to give you you know, you're you know, he'd a bis rapper producer on mother fucking Earth and that's see, that's see, that's it. But but but it's it's rare even when you're called. I've done a lot of different novels for different rappers, you know, in the past, and the ones where there was that sort of trust there, the one that we were, the ones that were the most exciting for me, you know what I mean. Mike was always really open. Mike was always open to my ship, and which is cool because my shit is a little weird. The ship is a little weirder than the you know, it is um it always was. It was always a little jagged, a little dissonant, a little from left field. You know, that's what's ill like you're not an imitator, like, that's the illest ship. Also raped nerd ship. So many people imitated, and I don't even mean in a bad way because if I hadn't been a twelve year old imitating ice Cube, I never would have developed my style. Early NWA, early ghetto Boys, early Shiit references run DMC. A lot of IT references run DMC in terms of the way they were patterns, the beats, but the good ones they rolled to the top because they innovated as they imitate the imitate you innovator, and before you know it, you've made your own thing. What's ill about your ship? And what's weird? And what I love about the weirdness of it is this a progression of the ship we grew up on. And it's never been a cheap imitation. It has never been all. I've never walked in a room and all just says, yeah, I just went and chopped. The DC said, I'm like, nah, man l w and fould and recreate and and I'm like, it's sound, but it is this What the fuck have you done? And before you know it we wrapping our ass off. And that's what I love about. He ain't a viterer, he ain't a swash swiper. He will take an influence from our twelve year old or thirteen year old or conversation about BDPN. He'll give something that feels like that to me. But I'll never I don't. I never even get the urge to swipe a pattern from Chris. You know what I'm saying. It's just that I feel like Chris when I'm wrapping this fit. And that's that's I don't know what the call that I don't know what he does, but the weirdness is something I trust because it's from a pure place and it's not just swagswicking. So he I just want to say, I love you Weirds. Keep that weird shit coming, bro for real. Choice, I don't have a choice. I wanted to be epm D you know what I mean, Like I never, I could never. One day I just woke up. Remember when I first started doing records and people were like, it's so fucking crazy, and I'm like, what are you talking about? This just sounds like this. It just sounds like normal done pimp out to me. And it took me a while to be like maybe it is, Like maybe I'm weird. What was crazy though, it's with the epm V reference. I remember, like if you look all through the Reggie Reggie Noble ship, they did funk in a way that was not West Coast, because West Coast did funk counter bright Kunda and sometimes really if it was but if it was pure, pure West Coast, it damn it even got counter so funky it became something that was like your parents shit, like boogie almost right. And I don't mean that in a bad way to pun but it was it was a boogyesh EPMD did that funk that was like, it was nasty, it was ride, it was it was something else man and it was dark and it was sewery, red and grimy. And you've took that into take that influence into some wilder, weirder, more spaced out like if their ship will had us on the gunners and sewers, it was when the water goes down into the guns and sewers, Like what kind of wild, weird shit it's under the subways. And for me, a rap nerve from the South, that's hole. I always wanted to be able to do that kind of shit with those kind of people like Premiere. Being from Texas was one of the things that kept me rapping. I was like, Yo, prem is from Texas. Oh, we can do this scarface loving New York kip hoop. So it's a dream to me to wrap it. So, even though I'm not a New York MC, my Southern take on New York m scene for some reason locks right into what L does in a way that I couldn't get in the South for much of my career. Even though people kind of felt where I was coming from it wasn't from that soil. And I think that hybrid is something that has made out sound something that that is there's no bounds to it, you know. I remember when Bunby called me Elle like second album, like one of the Jews too, and he said, kill keep doing what y'all doing, because you guys are going to have an opportunity to be like outcasts. And I'm like, you know, if that's what you smiling like, I uh, you know, thank you. He say no. He say no, He say, because they locked me and Pimp into this thing, even though Pimp would want to expand and do this. Even though he says they locked us in. He said, that's not bad. We've had a he say, Ball and G. People have a perception. He say, people have no perceptions of y'all. Y'all just have the expectation of whatever you want. We're gonna be willing to take the rial with you. When he said, that's a freedom, so embrace that. So I've never shot away from a lot of Elle's ideas because my OLGS was just like, whatever the thing y'all doing can take you guys past regionalism, past hip hop elitism, past past southern um stereotypisms like two Chains is on this record in big part because he's an LP fan. He's my friend, you know what I'm saying. I loved his rap, He's love my rap for years. But he said I gotta get on the track with the White Man. You know, he loves it. And that's such a that's a beautiful thing because that doesn't happen otherwise. And before you know it, and I would never say this because there's such a huge act to me. Before you know it, we are accepted, like my items. We accepted like Cass. We can go a lot of different places, do a lot of different things because I trust the weirdness that's LP. That's this this beautiful thing. You know, he's produced for jez before. If I was geez El would have been lud. He would have did Motivation three. You know. But thank god, thank you Jeeves. I love you brother. It worked out. I will say that while you're from the South, it has a distinctly East Coast sound between the two of you, it is it is definitely East Coast rap music. And that's my fault because that's those are my for sure, my roots. And like I said, but but but but my partnership of Mike and my interest in rap music in general, Like, I love all that shit. I always love music from the South, I love music from the West, I love music from That's something I think that for a long time, people made a certain assumption about me, that I was sort of I came from a certain ilk, and that I was only appreciative of a certain type of thing. I take what I take, what I feel out of those influences and add them in, and I think that the hybrid shit is the shit that's the most potent to me, you know, Like and so me and Mike are just immediately a hybrid and naturally a hybrid. It's it wouldn't be as powerful if it was just me on my beats. It just wouldn't be Mike coming in with a with a with a Southern style and influence just as you know, just as heavy as as the influences that we share. He comes in with the other thing and me coming in with you know, my roots. We're fucking with sound here, you know what I mean, Like we're creating sound. Next, the next track is uh la La, which is my favorite beat on the album. Oh really, that's awesome. Tell me a little bit about how did it's like, even from a musical basis, How did it start? Did it start with the sample? How did it start? It started because I had I was plotting on that Greg Nice sample for fucking decades. It started because I always wanted to sample something. I didn't know what it was going to be. I'm just a huge Greg Nice fan, a huge Nice and Smooth fan, an unheralded great hip hop group that I feel like people aren't like should go back listening to their records because they're so fucking fun and funky and dope. So it just started with that, And it started with that little piano thing that I played and then and then chopped up, And that record is a perfect example I think of what Run the Jewels For is about spiritually in terms of the production approach, because I think more than any other record before it, one of the things that I knew going into this was like, Yo, I'm actually going to lean into my influences on this, like I'm I'm I'm actually going to put them on display, like might pointed out, which does not mean that I want to recreate songs from from my childhood or or um, but I'm going to try if I can to transfer the spirit of those jams, to transfer to transfer that everyone knows like there's this there's a particular type of hip hop banger that that that comes from an era before this one, that if you can nail the spirit of it will put a fucking huge smile on anyone who loves hip hop's face. It doesn't matter if you're a new hip hop fan listening to all the new styles of production or all the new ship or you're an old one. There's something special there that if you could harness it, And that's what I was hoping to try and capture with that with that beat, where it was like the eight o eights and the and the drums and everything is super modern, but you're gonna I want to I we really And that was like untried territory for Run the Jewels, Run the Jewels. Making a song punk that makes you just smile immediately was felt like it was untried territory, like damn Me or a party jam. When you hear what we're rapping about. When you actually listen to the lyrics, it's pretty hard, like it's not you know. It's one of the more meta tracks where it has a lot of hip hop references in it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's true. I think Mike was like inspired by that feeling, right might dropped a few Jay Rue we dropped it was It's important to me to tip my hat to those man And I just got to say the Jay rule the damager homage in a big way to me because you understand you. I'm in I'm in Spanish class and miss Blades class and Ernest Hawkins just to my left, my girlfriend Teresa's to my right, and yo, we just three kids from the South that love music. So Teresa's like, you know, slim modelesque little thing, looked like a look like a good girl. And she would be fucking rapping eight Ball and MJG because our brother and Kevin was playing it. And I'm like, what the fuck? And then I come in and play records for them, and I can remember turning Ernest so on the ship like the brand Nubian turned them on the far side, but the Jay Rud the damaging ship. Me and my man Terrence Tflow Too married my cousin. We went crazy over this dude, just this dude that putilistic linguistics check out the mistics there fantastic and me fantastic. Check it. You'll get to ask you challenge my verbal to Nasty Van Acrobatic's vocabulary callistep. I'm just like, oh wow, I probably should practice more. I'm spending too much time fucking. So I always wanted to give him that, you know what I'm saying, So thank you know what's funny? Man? So about about jayru What? Well, I'll tell you if you don't know the first So in the in the nineties, when I was making my rep in the scene basically as a rapper, and the biggest thing that could that could happen for you was that you could get on Stretch Arms Trying and Bobato's show and you can and they could think that you're dope enough to bring you up to freestyle on their show. And that was how I made my name, that you know, sort of at the very beginning of Company Flow. The first time I was ever invited up there was in nineteen ninety three and Stretch Armstrong asked me what beat I wanted a freestyle. So the first beat that I ever freestyle too was over the come Clean by Jerry the Damager. Yeah, boom boom boom was just the nastiest thing that anyone had ever heard ever at the time, and it just made it just made every rapper just be like, oh my god, I have to I have to have a beat like that. I have to I have to be able to fucking rhyme like that. Like and Jru actually comes to Um comes to max Fish, which is a bar that that I owned in New York that I called in New York. Jru still comes around. So he showed love to me. Man. It just I was like a fucking goofy ass kid on the other side of the internet, just like, oh man, thank you man him and God bless the dead dirt dog like Oldie be Like I love the wou Tang as a collective and individual, so you know how you picked people you're patting yourself after, like, um, I want the Crescy moaning stall um because drug dealers in my neighborhood. That was really cool and rap faurn Ward. So it was like that's that's me right there. I'm in the woo way the truck Jury's ghost facing fluence. But when I think about the polars in the wolf, the Jessum liquid Sore is one of the most coldly calculating, beautiful just hip hop the record It is Dean's less and then the king of absurdity and wildness, Brooklyn Zoo ode B makes this record that's to me a polar opposite of but Man that he was one of the greatest influences of letting go Me and my two of my children's mother would play that. She was a Southern too love music, But me and Mimi would just play that shit every fucking day. So I always wanted to get Dirt Dogs flowers. I never got a chance to meet the God, but I met Ghost, met relationship with Raider. But I'm blessed too. But had I been met Dirt Dog Man, I would I would have just out of bout to him because his style was so effeless, so wild, so entertaining. It was favored, you know what I'm saying, Like we love Favor in Atlanta. Favo can do the same three records for the rest of his life. I hire him for all my birthday parties. I hire hire for stadiums because he is genuinely energy and it's it's the same as Flame. I don't care how old Flame gets how wow. The outfit flavor Flame always gives me an energy that I'm mann if I'm gonna levy your avoid game. And Dirt I always wanted to give Dirt that, So you know, it's the be kind of the beat kind of reminded you, I think of of oh baby, I like it's like again, I think I think it was because the spirit of that beat, it just you know, it brought that out in us, and and uh, it was just something that you know, Rick, we're always like, like when you're making albums and you have a body of work, you're not when you're like with us, we're not really competing or or thinking about it in terms of what are our contemporaries doing. We're sort of thinking about it in terms of what what have we done? What are what have we not mind yet of? That's ours? You know that like, And I think it's the reason why we came out the first song just Blazing at the Gate, because I'm round the Jewels. Three. We decided that it would be interesting to start with a more contemplative jam, you know, and um, once we got that out of our system, I think we wanted to do the opposite of that, and and and so this jam ooh La Lab it was really also that it was also like, yo, let's let's make a fucking classic hip hop party banger that translates now that actually translates that, and now it's getting played on fucking radio like with contemporary shit, which is really crazy. And it's just and it's it's a feeling. It's a feeling that I don't think you hear on the on the radio, much like I don't think that that vibe is apart from that song right now, I don't think you would hear that vibe any other people's shit. Yeah, so great, and you got premiere on the track add too Many And we had to give Greg Nice a feature credit because it was like we didn't want to just we didn't want to just take Greg Nice and turn it into something modern. We wanted to bring Greg Nice with us. We wanted people to understand who he was, even if they didn't get really who his history and Runner Jules has been like an amazing excuse for us to do right by the people that we admire, you know, to try and do right by the people that we admire. So when we've been lucky enough to collaborate with heroes of our premiere is a hero. Greg Knice is a hero. You know. We try and use our platform to really honor them. You know, that's what you're supposed to do. Like this ship is exposure. Like I think of how many like I know Bob James because of rap music. You know what I'm saying, I know who it is, like if it if it wasn't for Like think about the Rolling Stones, man, I fought enough for life because they took Muddy Waters on tour. Like you, like you think about how dope that is you exposing your audience to your influences and great music. Like my thirteen year old daughter listen to Twick. Her twenty six year old brother listens to Dwick. He's been listening to Dwick since he was thirteen. But thirteen, she's not supposed to think, but her big brother and her dad think her cool. But she does because she looked up Greg Nice, you know what I'm saying. She liked his voice. She she's curious, so she's on a pathway to discovering dope shit. And that's all I ever wanted for rap music. I remember when they used to tell us this shit isn't gonna last, It isn't gonna be here. It's just like new wave. It's gonna come and it is gonna come and go time exactly. And it's almost fifty now, and now we get to Now we get to do the right thing by the people sometimes who the right thing wasn't done by you know what I'm saying. And that's why I was important for me to have the feature. It was important to half form mere actually cut, because these things need to become relative. You need to know they're certain shit that I still don't even know. And I've been listening to this shit over half my life now, and I just know that there's a little dolt producer somewhere in the South, somewhere here who's going to get influenced by that. He's going to flip that ship and the world is going to go nuts. And that's the beauty of right. Can we just bring up the fact that we're talking to a dude who, through hip hop music, turned us onto rock music. I mean, none of us knew who the fuck Aerosmith was. We didn't know who Aerosmith was, man Like, we didn't like, we didn't we didn't know really probably at that age who led Zeppelin was, you know what I mean, Like we learned about this ship through the beastis we learned about it through run DMC. Like this is a gift that you gave our generation, your your influences combined with something new. It's no different than what we're you know than even referencing your own form of your own genre, but referencing at another time of it. You know. And we're very much not interested in making retro music. But we know that what our what our strengths are, man Like, our strengths are not making the new stuff that people are making. Like like, our strengths are that we have a history. Our strengths are that we have a musical history of influence. And so we just tried to really, you know, we just tried to like do right by it. You know. It's one of the things that made the music that we were making similar to the way you do it, was that we always thought of it as a group. It was always a group. Even even Ella cool J. I thought of it as Ella Coolj as a group. And it's got a particular sound and it's different than pop music. Pop music. You have a singer and there's a lot of different producers. It's always been that way, like a series of singles put together, but it didn't have a point of view, whereas rock groups tended to have a point of view where all of it felt like was coming from the same place. And again you're you're maybe the only group doing it now. That that carries on that tradition of um the credibility of rock music brought through hip hop, that's interesting. I'll say the rock tradition, the rock tradition. Sure, sure, I feel that because for me, like even locking In going back to me saying I really felt like this was supposed to be when when we were like, yeah, we're gonna do the one or two, it was like we got it four. We're not a real group till we get four albums in like and I got that from from from from zeppyln Like, I got that directly from Zeppelin because there are times in my youth where I've played I've just played them, I just all day, I'm just fucking around and they're just playing them in my room and it's a dark because I wanted to rap over the ship I was listening to. I wanted to wrap over black sackers like I remember when when the Roll Warriors were coming to Rank No No, I would be rapping. How'd you jug out like I wanted? I wanted that, I remember it. So when you chop rocks there, I'm just like a break. I'm this motherfuck this is amazing. The authority that that Running d wrapped with was, and it was so opposite because my mother was sixteen, So rapp was Curtis Blow, you know it was. It was who dns. It was gentlemanly, it was slick, it was player. It was silk shirts and they had all you know what I'm saying, the shark skinned pads with you know, they may have them on some shoes. It was some adult shit, even because my mom was older. But when that black denim showed up and those motherfuckers started jackets accompanied to this dark music that I already liked with rock and the guitars, I liked it because my grandparents listened to blue so I was used to guitar. But it was totally different. But it felt like it was supposed to be. But when I went to like school, nobody gave a fuck. Did I listen to led Zepeline or or our friends Offenhead introduced us to Queen. They didn't give a shit, but your music gave me that and I'm like, oh, so this is what you're supposed to do. Was the first punk? Ship was the first punk Like, like, yo, I just want to say this thought real quick before we lose, before I lose it. Yeah, rap music is the first form of music, first form of production, first form of music that I think ever where if you were a rap music fan or a producer of rap music made you think about, made you listen to other music with the idea of this is dope. But imagine if this were a fucking beat. Imagine if this were a rap song but rap music, man, like what it made me do throughout my whole life and really starting with your whole crew, because your whole crew were the first ones that were like, uh no, we're not wearing tassels, We're fucking we're killers. We're coming out savagely fucking destroytion and we're stripping it down and we are. And you know, it was the first like super abrasive, super aggressive shit to come out that because you you had something a playoff, and you had that whole era that Mike talking about the playoff of and to differentiate yourself say actually, we're not that, we're the new breed, like this is stripping all of that away. No more, mister nice guy shit, you know what I mean? And well, we didn't. We didn't like R and B. So that it was like the distinction between the earliest rap records were a continuation of R and B with people rapping on them, and we were we weren't. That was not our lineage. It was more rock punk, rock, drum machines, craft work, you know, just different different, uh, different fluences. So it was more um, the b boy mentality same and that's the same lineage that I have always had, was always like, yo, I'm not actually, I mean, I love all of this ship, but my direct influences, it's not. It's not sampling soul records. It's not because it's because I was interested in other disparate sounds. I was interested in other other combining other ship. But it's all respected. Yeah, And I'll say also, I would chop up soul records all day just to make the point. It's like, it's more like when you think of what R and B was in the eighties, exactly exactly. That was what we didn't want. Buddy. What's dope about hip hop to me is a sicular because the last record I ever bought from my grandfather was Buddy Guys Sweet Tea, and I've grown up listening to Buddy Gut my grandfather and Sweet Tea. Did it sound like Buddy Guy, But the sound was so heavily influenced that he fit right in. It was more electronic than I had heard. It was almost as though Porta's head had influenced Buddy. But we know Buddy got more than likely influenced Portis said and many others after him. But what the adult shit about rap was? Growing up with my grandparents, they played the blues, so it was either it was either the blues or gospel. That's what I was hearing rock music, And the reason that I realized later why I love Zeppelin so much was because they were doing their interpretation of what the blues was. The reason I understood the Stones from the first time I heard them is you know, oh my, this is like the ship my grandmother listens to. It sounds different, but it ends the same spirit. What you did with rock music was almost bringing the blues home. Because because lyrically Rapp is as dark. Sometimes it's the Blues without being sad, Like the Blues could say some some dark things right, you know, but but it not be sad. I see my grandparents dancing and and my other grandma's house, my uncle's an some drink too much with me dancing, and people with joy Field. But some of the songs were like who. Rap was aggressive and it could hit hard, but it never saddened me. It made me feel proud, like in the middle of the eighties when the world was going crazy to see running d out amongst the people wrapping their ass off, because you gotta think I'm in Atlanta doing Atlanta, missing the murder. So there literally is a feel that I can leave the house at seven years old and I cannot make it home. And Rap helped me break whatever fear that was that I had as a child, that it was I think, I don't think Wayne Williams gets arrested to eighty two eighty two, I'm seven. I'm already walking home back and forth to the bus stop by myself. I've already figured out how to sneak on the Martyr train and just go on adventures by myself before I go, you know, get back from so I figured shit out, but I could have not made it. A Part of the confidence that happens in eighty two, eighty three, eighty four is that music changes for me, Like like I say, man, when I've seen the Fat Boys, when I seen Rue DMC, when I seen Cool J, when I was like, this isn't this isn't what my mom's listening to. This shit makes me pulp my chests out, you know what I mean. And it's it's like the Blues came Home, you know, and and it just it It's it's crazy how things seem secular like that because I know that Crump music there literally was a rock movement in Atlanta for like nine months to a year and a half and it's amazing. Yeah, music it relates to It relates back to Lula Lah because like it's like I said, we're not saying soft shit on that record, but not saying party shit. You know, I I'm I'm saying fucking you know, you're suffering a scrumptures, so put your you know, they'll put your kids in the oven. Like this is not if you really look at the lyrics that we're spitting. It's something. It's some it's some almodamn near you know, militant shit at times, and it's certainly some paranoid shit at times. But I think that there's something about truth that is funky and fun even if truth is hard, you know what I mean, Truth brings joy. Truth doesn't have to be soft, and joy doesn't have to be soft either. Like joy is a result, it's not a sound. You know. Um, if you can create a record that creates joy, it didn't mean that you just made something that sounded happy, you know, it just meant that the result was joy, you know. And and it's and often the lyrics will be hard. It doesn't leave you with a heavy feeling. It's and it's usually in the context of the things around it. You know, you'll be the hardest lyric and then four bars later it's a joke, you know, and it's all good. You know, it's like it's hip hop. It's really all hip hop. No, no, thank you for saying that, because that's something that we like, really take. We hold that importantly, you know, we really hold like we hold the we hold the jokes in just as high regard as we hold those moments of real seriousness straight up, And I think it's more the ability to get serious message over in a way that people can take. It often involves that because if, if all, if you feel like a record is just lecturing at you and telling you what to do, people don't want to be sermonized. No, you know, doesn't work like that. That's why I always hate when people go into the there's entertainment and whether I ju personally lyrically, But the goal is to be the hardest motherfucker on the v That's that's that's you know, you know, I'm saying, you've learned what they call a twist and turns after But the goal, if your gym is is to outflip the fuck out of everybody and look great doing it. So on a raw artistic level, you know what I'm saying, that's what it's this shit is about. And I don't I'm careful or I'm safe and run the jewels and that that's not allowed to happen. Sorry, we're still getting this fucking Joe far. It's one of the things about about protest songs. If you're if you're aiming to make a protest song, it usually fails. Yes, the best protest songs were people singing about their internal struggle, and then those songs become turned into protest songs. But rarely are they written from that perspective, because if you write it from that perspective, it doesn't really break through. It doesn't doesn't have the energy to transcend. Like you don't want to be and you don't want to be um. You don't want to be told and never do drugs by someone who's never done drugs. You want to You want to hear that shift from somebody who did drugs all their life and now they can barely fucking talk. That's someone I'll listen to, you know, like, oh you're interesting, you know. But and even even then, even then, though I don't want them telling me what to do, I don't mind hearing there. I'm happy to hear their story and maybe I can learn from it. But I want to make up my own mind correct and the right. And most of those motherfuckers they won't tell you shit because they know it's more complicated than that, you know, they know that it's not that easy. They know that it's not just about do the right here's the clear cut right thing. Because anybody who's been through some shit knows the nuance of being through some shit, and they know that they were unreachable by anybody with piety. Piety does not reach your soul, It does not reach your heart. It doesn't really mean anything to anybody who's got any grit or who's got any issues that they're dealing with. It's the reaction you're gonna get from that is, fuck you, motherfucker. Don't tell me what the fuck to do. You don't know me, stop fucking lecturing me. And that is the exact opposite of what me and Mike would ever want to be for anybody, you know. And this record that we made is not a protest album in creation it was. It's just an album of two dudes talking their ship and saying what they need to say. But this shit landed in the middle of a protest time, and so all of those sentiments that we were already already in our hearts and in our minds and naturally came out not in the way that we wanted to, you know, react to something. We're reacting to life like shit that's already been here, and it landed at a time that resonated with people. And I think that the reason why it did is because we're not we're not lecturing motherfucker's we're we're we're painting pictures where we're you know, we're flawed. These are anti heroes, these are not these are not princes of of of righteousness and goodness. We're we're fucked up, you know. Like I think that's what makes it probably the most successful protest music being made today for that for exactly that reason. It's coming from a spirit of reality and not a spirit of telling people what to do right or what to think or how to be right. We'll be right back with Killer Mike and LP. After a quick break, we're back with the rest of Rick's conversation with Round the Jewels. Something else that's interesting about the timing of your album and the content on it is in the history of music that has a political side to it, Like if we think in nineteen sixty nine, John Lennon wrote give piece a chance, and put out and give Piece a chance. That was in nineteen sixty nine. No one has given piece a chance since nineteen sixty nine. It did not happen. You had you have lyrics about slave owners, pictures on bills and simultaneously we see statues being pulled down of these slaveholders. That's unbelievable. Shout out to Farrell and the and the reason, and shout out to you because the reason why he's on our record is because we were in your studio and you had him over. It is surreal. I'm not gonna lie. It is surreal. And you know you were there, man, you saw us making his music. None of this ship was going on like this. It wasn't. It wasn't in the public consciousness at all. I mean, you know, not at all. It's yeah, it's crazy. Let's let's talk more about that track. About the track with Farrell? How did I understand you met him at the studio and then how to come together When he left the studio, he was like, let me know if you need anything. And we had that, we had that beat, we had, we actually had the verses. We just didn't have a hook. I think as soon as soon as we recognize that we didn't have a hook, it was was very very soon after Farrell had been like, let let me know if you need anything, and I think it was just really obvious to us. We were like, let's let's take him up on that. Let's see what he'll do, because he's a genius. I mean, he's like we knew that he would write something great, and we had no idea what it would be, no idea it could have been. He could have been saying a word, he could have just repeated a word, and it probably would have been just fucking dope. I give you know, I give I give him so much respect because I was blown I'm blown away when people are generous with their with their artistic shit, when they don't have to be, you know, someone in f us position. He could have given us pretty much anything, and we would have thought it was the ship. It didn't have to be really connecting to what we were saying. But he clearly really listened to what we were saying, and he connected it in a way that I don't think that we even knew it could be connected. You know, he wrote that hook and and it was not the We didn't know which Farrell we were going to be getting. We didn't know which side of him we were going to be getting. When we heard that ship, we were like, oh, Pharrell came into our world and and and stood up in it and that's and that was a huge honor to you know, in my mind was like wow, man, like we're really work, you know, to Mark. In our minds, we're still just these underground dudes, you know what I mean, Like we're still in that world. We were there our whole careers incredible. And when did Zach get on, he got on quick. There were two songs that I played Zach. This is before we had two chains locked in, so I played him two jams. We had the one jam that and it didn't make it to the album because of because of sample parents issues, and we had just and I played him both of those and the other one was a lot more straightforward. It was a lot more sort of mid tempo. It was a little bit it was probably and Zach reacted to that one, I think kind of on some shit like that's a normal pocket for me. I could get in there and kill that. And I pushed him to do the just thing because it was more of a double time, more of a modern like Bob. And I don't think anyone has ever heard Zach on something like that. I know that, and he rose to the challenge because I was just kind of like, no, I think you should I think that that would be obvious, you know, I think you should try this one. He was on Run the Jewels two and Run the Jewels three. This will be the third album of ours that you're on. You're basically the unofficial member of Run the Jewels. So he sent me that verse and he kind of presented to me like it was just a demo, and he did the verse with just an SM fifty eight, just handheld, like in his home studio, and you can hear it. It's all sort of distorted. It's got that it's got that sound. And I was like, all right, cool, So so what are you gonna do? You're gonna rerecord it? Then I'm like, you know, a better mic or whatever, and he was like he was like oh yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. So like a couple of days later, he was like, so, so what kind of MIC do you think I should get? I was like, I was like, what do you mean? And he was like, well, you said you wanted me to do it on a different, better mic or whatever. He was like, so what kind of MIC should I buy? And I was like you don't. You don't have another MIC? And he was like nah. I was like, wait a second, he was like, I was like, so he used an SM fifty eight, a stage mic, not even at this point the stage MIC's that we're using a stage mic for that every band in America uses, no matter how small or big they are. And he told me, he was like, this is what I recorded and you probably noticed, but this is how I recorded every single Rage against the Machine song with the handheld SM fifty eight. And so what was a demo to me? Which because at first it was a demo because it was like sounded distorted, and he presented it kind of like a demo like you know, hey, I'm just what do you think I could you know, ended up being the final verse. I was like, well, I'm not going to argue. If you did Rage against the Machine on that mic, then that's about as pure as zach de la Rocha as you can get, and I'm not gonna fucking I'm not gonna fuck that up. So it was like it just ended up being that first take that he did ended up being the you know, the final verse, and that's why it sounds differently. I didn't treat it different. I didn't treat the sound. It was just like distorted. Yeah, you said, there was another track that had a sample problem. Have you had to deal with sample problems often historically? Nah, that was the first time that we had had something this that really that really like ended up throwing us off at first. It was sort of a sixties rock sort of thing anyway, So what happened was we did the song. We loved it. It was really it was like, really like, we just said, fuck it, we're gonna really make this song. We're gonna loop it up, we're gonna chop it up for the bea, we're gonna use the hook, We're gonna like, you know, we're gonna do this because we've never done this before. And we and we stepped to them and they were they were like, yeah, we're cool with it. They listened to it, they were like, yeah, we're cool with it. Then they said, but we want one hundred percent of everything. We want one hundred percent of the publishing, we want one hundred percent of the master and me and Mike said, but please, can we maybe have something because obviously it's not one hundred percent because we're on and they were like, nope, that's the deal. And we were like, all right, fine, fuck it, that's the deal, then that's what you get. We wanted it, they said, cool. We mixed it, we mastered the album, and when we were getting all the final little details and contracts and everything and getting ready to submit the record, they had kind of disappeared. So we started to get a little nervous and we hit them up and bind you literally about the hand in the record and get the get the second half of the advance so that we can eat. And you know, they changed their mind. They changed their mind. I just said, they changed their mind, then I want I want you to do and we were going to give them a one hundred percent. So you know, I don't. I don't. I'm not mad at anyone about that, but that was the first but it was like shit, so we ended up having to rework. It was either we were going to throw the whole song away or we were going to find something that So we threw it away and we came up with another record that was another fucking amazing And that's the beauty of tragedy. Yeah, and for bands that are out there, rap groups there there, I've seen outcasts. Um tell me why they never got into sand And I was like why because Curtis Mayfield mentored them early and he told them, essentially, you can create y'all. VIAB can be inspired by shit, and I think that we've always trusted ourselves to do that. LL get inspired and do amazing shit, but you know, you try. Sometimes sampling is dope, and when the other artists is like fuck it, fuck it, try to chuck the whole shit and make yourself do it over. So we had to take a master the album, go back after having chucked the record and put it in. And for us, my fear at first was, man, am I going to not like my album as much as I liked my album because it's missing the record that that I had? But it's not because the record that we created became its own special things. So I appreciate the challenge and I appreciate getting the turned down because it forced us to It forced us to man up, and you know, tell me about let's talk about the lyrics for Walking in the Snow, how they come about. I started it and I was really pissed off that day because I was I was feeling very I was feeling very angry about the fucking wide spread hypocrisy of like institutional hypocrisy. You know, I was feeling very fucking annoyed and pissed off philosophically. But two groups of people. The first group of people was the type of person who, because they're not connected to the suffering of other people, allow authoritarianism to rise under the guise of because they simply just don't connect to the emotional aspect of other people suffering. And so I wanted to write something that challenged the logic of that, and that said, hey, listen, even if you don't care about other people that don't look like you or that aren't in your community, even if you can't muster up the empathy to connect other human suffering to the collective human suffering, let me appeal to your logic and say how fucking stupid it is for you to allow concentration camps to be built in America because you don't care about the people that are being put in them. And let me point out to you the fallacy of it, which is that do you think that once that group of people that you don't care about is gone, that those concentration camps get dismantled and everyone throws a party. No, you have aided and been complicit in the creation of a death machine that must then be fueled and continue. And the next further down on the next person down on the totem pole, the next group down on the totem pole gets the cage, and that's probably going to be you if you're poor. And I needed to say that it was something I was screaming, and the other and the other thing I needed to say as a non religious person and as someone who didn't grow up when any dog more, didn't grow up going to church or anything like that, but considers themself somewhat spiritual and also admire certain tenants and aspects of different like you know, different religions, and take and take from them sort of things that you know, that's feel inspiring to me. One of the things that I find incredibly difficult to reckon with is the the hypocrisy of the so called religious movement in America that somehow manages to qualify exceptions for their for the very tenants that they say that they are pacing your life amount. In other words, that should not kill unless it's somebody that I don't deem worthy of having life, you know, I wanted to challenge the idea that of this sort of insipid, poisonous version of Christianity that has risen in America hand in hand and with nationalism. In other words, the idea that Jesus and his teachings and nationalism can ever share the same space and share the same you know, ideology in any way, and question the idea. Ask someone who's not even of your group and say, hey, did you ever occur to you that you may not actually be Christian? You know, if you are genuinely motivated and have focused your life around the what you say you have, which is which is what you read in a book about the teachings of Jesus Christ, which I'm familiar with, it seems like there's a bit of a class here between those teachings and what you are, what you have accepted going on. And I think you're a fucking hypocrite. And I think that if one scrap of what you purport to live your life as a guideline connected with you in a real way, you would be a completely different person. And you wouldn't allow that, You wouldn't allow this to happen. And that's just something that I just personally felt like it's been. It was brewing in me, and I needed some space. I needed to say it, and I needed to get you know, I needed to get at it in a very clear like I'm going to fight you with some logic here. If you can fight back with my logic, let me know. But I think I've just I think I'm going to dismantle you with this, and someone has to say it, and you know, and then I and then basically I passed it off to Mike, and Mike wrote one of the most devastatingly beautiful and poignant and also from a different perspective, and then looped it back around to what I had set up in the front about Christianity. So you know, I'll let Mike before Mike one more question before before we get to the continuation. Was there a triggering event that got you started on the song? Was there one moment. I can't say that I remember exactly what what what got me started on it, except to say that if you're on fucking social media and you see the the sort of the mind numbingly hypocritical group think that people are taking, that people are activated in, and the excuses that people are making for having a low or questionable moral code, and the things that they're associating with. It'll drive you fucking crazy and you want to scream to the world, but you know what, you know what doesn't do anything fucking pointing it out on Twitter. So I think I think that I was just disgusted in general with with with all that shit, and it had bubbled up at me and I just needed to write about it. I just needed to write about it. Great. So Mike, you heard what L wrote and then what was tell me what happened? Alliance incredible first of all, and he calls, you know, the nationalism or the fascism that's coming in our country is one of white angles accent protestant Um nationalism served with a big keeping marriage to constitution and vival and you know it's going to be usher in that way. And he called culturally like his people to task on that right. So if you if you look at it, that's true. I was. I was talking to white people, by the way, as absolutely absolutely to us. But white people have the option of tuning out the ranting white cousin. They do it a lot. There's always that one or two white cousins that's in the family. Like you say, nigger and joke it's wrong, uncle, you shouldn't do this, and then the whole family's like, well, why did you have to say something? You ruined the day. But they're simply the one to say, you know, morally, that's just you know, it's it's we shouldn't be doing this funck shit or you know what I'm saying, and that verse you could. But my determination, or a lot of times my balance in this group is to personalize it so that you can. So I'm also talking to white people when I'm telling them, you're usually freest from this age, from this preschool age. It is usual when you're free, and then you're programmed to view poor people in this way. Your father and mom did this because they worked their ass off. It had nothing to do with the fact that your grandparents left them houses which they could sell start to build wealth, while the black kid in your class grandparents never owned homes because of redlining, or homes are underappreciated purposely by developers so they could buy them twenty years later and put stadiums there. You know what I'm saying. So you, in your mind of contexts, has always been fair. You're robbed of an opportunity to see the Confederacy per se as a treason, this act done to break up a country, because it's always taught to you as the war of Northern aggression and not the war of a failed secession, you know what I mean. So they have this luxury. But then I literally pulled them and tell them you have become so apathetic. Television is feeding you the narrative of Everything's okay. It's them that you've become so apathetic. You literally watched for eight minutes and forty six sepons as I die, That's what. And it's replaced your empathy with the apathe And now what I'm telling you is just like Altian. It's interesting because Al asked me about the Chompskin of Bukowski thing because they're not in the same value, and I was like, yeah, of course I read both. One gives a fuck, seize it for what it is as an anarchist and attempts to wake you up. The other seize it for what it is, chooses to indulge in nothingness, beautiful writing, women, and alcohol. I am both those human beings and one person rapping, and I think Al got it once. I was like yeah, of course. But because I wasn't coming from the militaristic Chomsky. I wasn't coming from the fuck at all. I'm ignored all. I was coming from a place of I understand saying vote. I get it, you know, I get why one of the Jews records so our seventy five percent, I'm wrapping my ass off punching there's twenty five percent of I have to show you this raw, beautiful humanity. So I had to give them that. So no matter where in the spectrum they were on whiteness, whether they was a raving lunatic cousin at the end of the table or Uncle Bob said, everyone is covered in saying I get it. But besides me getting it, I have to help you understand that did Gregor got this shit for fifty years before me? And I was blessed the last three years. This is where I personalized it, because I said earlier, I ended up in wickedly so and that's scared the shit out of me. Popping up in Hillary's playing email scared the fucking shit out of me. And it was right around the time when my wife really did tell me after her friends were like, you know, dude, like he's like mathmixed march. She said, I need a husband more than the world needs a martyr. She really said those words to me. I may over publishing. We'll see if we ever get divorced to make them after everything, but I needed to understand the things that he helped me understanding his last three years of life, and what he really helped me understand more than anything is begond race, beyond ethnicity, beyond what we consider class and culturing, all these things that are differences us. There is the state and there is us. And the state will kill you, just like they killed Martin, just like they killed Malcolm, just like they were culpable in the murder of Patrice Lament. But just like they've raised the price of Assila Shafer's bounty under a black president, the state does that. And I needed people to understand. Fuck the line that you impressed by about that, I can't breathe because they triggered you in the moment. After this moment, the state will still murder you. They murdered your messiah. They're going to murder whoever is poor after they murder us. And until you understand that in that moment, then everything just happens again again again, and the crazy cousin Rance and his black friend is like, thanks for inviting me over. I love that. Mike's like I took a whole verse to challenge the logic of nationalism and versus versus being, you know, following the tenets of of of Christianity, or whereas Mike handily dismantled the whole thing in one line and it was beautiful because it was like, you know, the song needed that too, the song it needed it needed to be like and here's a summary in one fucking line of why any allegiance, any any any principles that are that are allegiance to nationalism or the state are incorrect, are absolute? Is an absolute fallacy like and if you need any example of that, fundamentally, the very person that you, frankly are pretending to help you know whose principles you're pretending guide your life, he was murdered by the same fucking people that you are now showing blind allegiance to go. So where does so? So how is it that you managed to find the fucking loophole in your fucking house? How did you manage to find the one loophole that allowed you to exist in two spaces at one time. I believe in Jesus Christ and all of the tenants of Jesus Christ, and I'm a Christian and also don't challenge the state. That doesn't make any fucking In fact, you make Jesus a hood ornament for the state, right, And that's that's the scary part. Yeah, it's terrifying. Tell me, tell me more about Dick Gregory. Did you how did you? How did you do? That? Was my man? What the fuck are you talking about? Let me tell you. Tell me. I get a call one day, Hey kill them, Mike, what's up? Man? I get two ticks. Actually, Dick Gregory's in town. Um, I'm a Dick Gregory staying and fan already. Because my grandmother, my dad's my paternal grandmother. She would let me my maternal grandmother that raised me, you know, after her blues face, she went straight to the church and it was just Jesus. It was Jesus around the clock around our career. So my other grandma's house, I got a chance to listen to like Red Fox Records and Richard Pryor records, and you know, you start with prior because that's the biggest guy in the world when you're young. And then so I started going back and you go find you know, you find Dick Gregory's records. And I was a kid that would read the encyclopedia like I was naturally curious, and I wanted to be smart, and his stuff was sharp and smart. And then, you know, I don't know how, I don't I don't know how. I was doing the VCR era. My grandpa got like some old black and white stuff from him, and Red Fox was on some of them. You know. It was just like when they put four different comedians on one tape and that type stuff. And so I was into it. So I went out and I met him at one of the shows that he came out here bought a book. I met him after that when I went to the show. But I got to sit with him and talk with him. But before we got the chance to do that, we had to get on the phone with him, and he was me and Ti. We had just met him officially on the phone, and we were asking him what methods should we take of using our celebrity to help you know the world. And we named a bunch of shit that had already been done, And at one point t I says March, and he curses us the fuck out for like forty five minutes March on March for nigga, They're just gonna tell you you're gonna March the seven o'clock and if you ask out that seven fire, the gonna come fuck you up. And I'm just like, what the fuck Like he's cursing us out. Tip After about fifteen minutes from the caves up could Tip calls me after the rant like, man, my fall dropped, like you're a goddamn live You're falling fucking dropped. But in the curse out, it was such love and a want for us to It was again I'm raised my grandparents. It was no different than my grandfather again, frustrated with me, trying to show me how to believe breaks, but I understood how much here and then I just wanted to be around him. So whenever he come through, I'd invite the other homies out, we're gonna watch him, and I got a chance to start talking to him. So it wasn't an all the time constant relationship, but it was he always talked good about me. I found out after he died in other rooms. I was the only rappers name. He even remembered other people. He would say that, boy, you know what I mean, like that guy that I met, you know. But he literally would say that he talked about me to people like Kathy Hughes, the most powerful black woman in radio. And I found all this out that he did. But the conversations we had would be hours. It'd be after his show at eleven twelve, and we got him to four or five in the fucking morning. My wife said to me about a few hours ago, let's go look at a tree. And I'm like absolutely, because we had a tough day to day. We were out doing business and we were sniping at each other. And I asked him in front of her one night, hey, what did you do. You've been married all these years with your wife, what do you do when y'all arguing? He said, just whole hands and look at a tree. And I'm going to tell all married people, if you put your fucking ego aside for ten minutes and walk the fuck outside, stand in the grass and look at a fucking tree, something happens, or it's just fucking open. Just go ahead. Something happens. And that's real. So I still live by the things some of the things that he's taught, you know what I'm saying. So I knowing him was one of the great honors of my life because very few people get and I'm gonna tell you this. I grew up knowing Reverend James Orange. I grew up who was a direct assistant to Doctor King and organized. I grew up knowing Joseph Lowry. I grew up knowing great people from my culture. But the beautiful thing about Dick Gregory was he really became my friend and mentor and imparted things on me that will that will give me a wisdom in life that are much much richer than had I not known him. Beautiful, and I want to thank his family for sharing him with the world because I cannot understand until died, how audulous that must be. Beautiful. Thank you for sharing about Dick Gregory. I've always been a fan, so it's nice to hear. And I don't know anyone who ever met him, so it's it's beautiful to hear. Tell me where the hook came from in the ground below. Love never meant so much to me. It went through so many different it went through so many different changes. Man, is it a sample? No? No, No, that's Mike singing. Really, yeah, I had no idea. That's the greatest comblement I've ever gotten. I really didn't know. I had no idea. I assumed it was a sample, but I didn't know it was something that I had written, that I had wrapped, and then I sent to Mike, and then Mike went to the studio and he sang it because he was inspired to sing it. And then we ended up getting on a phone and being like, all right, let's combine. It's just it was just it was the last song that we did, and we just ended up sort of doing a hybrid. I kind of sent it back and forth him a few times, and yeah, but Mike, Mike had done the whole I took what I had done. I had wrapped the whole thing. Mike took okay, and he sang the whole thing, and you know, we had to meet in the middle. Basically, we had to meet in the middle. Yeah. Cool. But I love the way it came out too. I love the way it came out. I think it sounds awesome, you know. And how did the singing sections in pulling the pin get written. I wrote those they're beautiful, thank you, and again sort of similar, I wrote it and it was written to be wrapped, and then me and Mike both for trying to kind of see if we could sing it, and then wasn't It wasn't working. And then you know, Mike tells the story and fifty percent of the time I smile, and fifty percent of the time I want to punch him in the face because I remember what it felt like. But all of the time I'm happy that it happened this way. Is that basically Mike more so than anything that I've ever seen him dig in on. And Mike was like, we need to get like a soul singer, like a soul voice to do this. And it was long, you know how long we were working on recommend and it was and it was it was laid in the game, and I was I was tired, and I and I was like, man, I didn't and so we sent it to a couple of different singers and Mike was like, I don't like and I was annoyed because I was like, motherfucker, because you know, part of me was just like I'm tired, I'm just tired. But I love him for it because he insisted. He insisted because he felt something in it. And that was a big honor for me, because when you write something, you want your partner to feel it right it's and he felt it, and he was he was telling me that in his way that he felt well, I was what I was saying, But he was also saying, it's because I feel it that we can't say it. We couldn't do it. It was that shit wouldn't have been right, Like what what a whipping post was saying? Pop versus by two wail a wailing Southern boy. You know what I'm saying. I'm like, what is what is? What is respect? A reathing? I've seen? So I just I knew a head to be sold. So and then will you know one of the manager says, you know, maybe what bro what about? Maybe it is like fucking light bulbs go off at the potential. And I can remember because I had developed a relationship with her a few years ago, but we were supposed to work. We didn't work. But like an auntie nephew relationship, like she really is one of the most beautiful, radiating souls, even to just to talk to over the phone, envy meeting people, but I envy l for getting a hugger, you know. But when when it came back that she consider it and then did she do it, it was it was just like like like a being like I could like, man, it happened. I mean, yeah, it's d it was ordained, man, because like like this shit, like no one else that I know of, alive now and active in music now, who is eighty years old, who could connect a lifetime of struggle and beauty and soul. We're really young compared to her, Like, we're of a totally different generation. And even though we're sophisticated, I believe in our understanding of certain things, there's something that can not that we were not capable of expressing through our vocals. The most beautiful thing about this story of the collaboration is that it's again a great example of collaboration. And I'm not even talking about the singing part. I'm talking about Mike hearing something of yours and caring more about it than you do and insisting away yeah, and insisting that it be. And that's what makes a great partnership, in that you each make each other better, even when the other guys ready to give up. Yeah, you push each other to Rick and Rick, I'm not usually ready to give up, man, But I have been working on this record. No, no, no, it's beautiful. It's a beautiful story. It's a beautiful story. And you know I knew that too. That it's not like I thought, like, it's like I understood it even as it was happening. I was just tired, but I knew, but I understood it enough to be like, okay, let's keep You were just done, you were just done. Like look, yo, the truth of the matter is is that the labor of love that I put into these records, my job on these records, it takes a long time. Like what I have to do on these records takes a long time and a lot of hours, and and you know, it's just it's just it's what I asked for. It's what I wanted. I wanted to be the guy who makes the music and who crafts the album. And I'm good at it. But it's also it's time. It can be tiring after a while, and and Mike had to pick up that energy. Man, he had to be the time to say you're right. He cared about it in that moment, cared more about what I said than I did. I was ready to throw in the towel and that. But that energy is I feel like when when I connected to it, when I hear it, it's that, it's that collaborate, It's the energy of all everyone involved working together to get to this better place. It's remarkable and beautiful. It's beautiful, feel exactly. I feel very I feel very very lucky that it happened that way, and I feel very honored that I um, Mike had, Mike had met her before, I had never met her. And then the day, the day after she um, she said she would do it, I was on a plane in Chicago. I was, I was. I was there the next day. And being a part of Run the Jewels has led to some of the most beautiful experience like experiences as a musician and a person that I've ever had, Like um being able to be in the room and to be and to be working with someone who has that, you know, that caliber spirit and something that neither me nor Mike could ever um could not yet, not yet in our lives could we bring the amount of pain and history and love and anguish to that record and she has it, and it's so inspiring because it's like, Wow, this is the point of keeping making art, Like this is the point of this is why you don't ever stop. You have to keep going and keep because there's something that you're going to be able to pull off at eighty years old that you were incapable of pulling off at fifty, you know, And and it's inspiring to me. It's like, man, I'm going I'm just going to keep going because I think that I've seen it doesn't die, it just it changes and it becomes more powerful. And she connected us to generations of protests and heart and love that that you know, we're very lucky to be connected to in any way beautiful. And earlier, Mike, you said that, um, you needed to do at least four albums for it to be like a real for it to be a real project. And I feel like, yeah, could be a real buy now with this fourth album, you guys are just getting started. It feels like just the beginning really does to me too. That's what That's what Mike keeps saying too. I just I just take it one record at a time because because it's just been It's just been a friendship, you know what I mean for me, because you know, for me, I don't like to think of it in any terms except are we making a new song? Are we making a new jam? You know, because all of these things just start with songs with me and Mike. And the one thing that's kept me coming back that is, like all of this stuff that was is hard about Run the Jewels and all the stuff that gets complicated with Run the Jewels, there is another aspect to it two, which is that the complication is never about music to complicate. Like the music and the and the and the spirit and the energy that we have when we're in our zone. It's always been surprising, it's always been exciting, it's always been invigorating. It's always been something I couldn't predict. And I'm always seeking out that and and but at the same time, I always like to think from the very beginning, I always kind of like to think the more your your union and your partnership with someone is more powerful if that person knows that the second that they don't want to be in this, the second that this doesn't feel right to them, that it's all good. I still love you. You don't have to do this with me if it doesn't feel right. And of course we know that we're not walking away from each other. But I'm just saying that spirit has always been there with us, Like, yo, look, this is a choice. You're choosing to be in the room with me. Every time you don't, you don't have to. And and because we're both choosing to be in the room with each other every time, it keeps, It keeps the love there, you know what I mean, It keeps. It's like we're walking in with our eyes open. And so Mike's often like, will say that, And of course in the back of my head, I'm like, yeah, no doubt. But I'm a little superstitious. I don't like to say shit like that. I don't like to say shit like that out loud. I like to just let it happen. So thank you both, and I look forward to seeing you sooner than later. Peace. Thanks to LP and Killing Mike for taking the time to break down their new album. You can hear Run the Jewels four, along with our other favorite songs from them, by heading to Broken Record podcast dot com. We sure to check out our YouTube channel to catch up on past episodes and bonus interview footage, including an extending cut of today's episode. You can subscribe at YouTube dot com slash broken Record podcast. Broken Record is produced with help from Jason Gambrel me LaBelle Leah Rose, Eric Sandler, and Martin Gonzalez for Pushman Ministries. Art musics by Kenny Beats. I'm Justin Richmond bass