Review Summary: This Is Run The Jewels 3 And Maybe There's A Reason They've Used The Same Album Cover 3 Times. They're All The Same Album But This One Is Worse
Stereotypes are bad, especially within music, especially when discussing race, but sometimes there's groups of people that do nothing but make it excruciatingly hard not to perpetuate said stereotypes. Run The Jewels is one of those groups. They keep perpetuating the stereotype of “white rap”, and while that term shouldn't innately be a negative thing, RTJ makes it really hard to think otherwise.
These guys love not to change. These guys love to be redundant (Ha I'm An English Comedian). Run The Jewels loves making fast paced songs with a beat with more than a tinge of modern edm influence, mixing the hip hop head crowd that love them some fast words, and the EDM CROWD THAT JUST FEELS THOSE KICKS MAN. THEIR HEARTS BEAT AT THE PACE OF THAT KICK. Run The Jewels reaches the white audience, which isn't bad. I'm white. My other friends that listen to hip hop are white. My friend that listens to nothing but Rings of Saturn is white. A lot of white people compile the music listening audience. I lost my train of thought here's the next paragraph.
Run The Jewels appeals to the BORING white audience. You know whit.. sorry.. WHAT, *** the word white. I've seen a black guy listen to RTJ before; Run The Jewels appeals to the boring music audience. Point blank, period.
Lyrically, these men really don't have much to say. Killer Mike says ski mask at least 10 times on this thing. Probably a tad exaggerated, but seriously, the fact that most of the times, if not all of them, involve Killer Michael putting it on to commit some sort of rebellious crime (he's like 40) says a lot about what the man has to say. Its either, A. rebel crime crime marijuana politic, B. I rap good I rap good rap rap rap we make classic rap, or See. I TOOOOLD YOU EL-P, RUN THE JEWELS MOTHER ***DUEERRRRRRRR. As for El-P rapping. I could probably make up some other mockery of his lyrics if I could hear half of them over the noisy production on this thing.
His performance is mediocre and monotonous tough guy New York Accent as always.
Production. Too noisy. Not in the good way either. Not in the Sach-im-trying-to-blow-my-eardrums-out-intentional way. Like EDM kid got a MIDI, played around on fruit loops for the first time and TURNED THE SUB BASS AND PERCUSSION ALL THE WAY UP BECAUSE I LIVE FOR THAT BASS and then had the vox mixed half as loud to the point where half of the lines are hard to even comprehend.
Summary: Legend Has It has some fun parts. Cali Pinkerton has the worst hook of all time. It's fun to make the synth noise on Oh Mama with your mouth, but then he says notice me senpai. Yea.
