Taking to the stage against the fanfare blare of Queen's We Are the Champions, are Run the Jewels swaggeringly self-assured, full of quirky wit, or – given the hip-hop duo's invigorating year – simply issuing a sober statement of fact? Maybe it's an admission that MCs El-P and Killer Mike have a lot to live up to: namely, two staggeringly good albums that have reignited the rage, politics and surprises of "alternative" hip hop. As producer, El-P excels at twisting the grammar of electronic music into the pneumatic snap of hip hop, finding room for fizzing synths, dark decayed beats and – when the mood requires it – a smuggled sample from Pacman or Flipper. In concert, you lose that meticulous construction to a backing DJ, but you gain in the propulsive force of their rhymes. Atlanta rapper Killer Mike exerts a muscular control, his deep and wide baritone sounding laid back, even as he threatens the listener with specific physical harm. Allied to El-P's spikier, over-caffeinated rapping style, they find a rare kind of balance.
Authority figures never do well here – the government, the military, poor old Kanye West – so it’s especially pleasing when El-P halts the sold-out show to tell an officious security guard to knock it off. “You might want to get out of the way,” adds Killer, “because this sh*t is going the f**k down.” The crowd is advised to a) go crazy and b) look after each other. And, somehow, that’s exactly what they do.
This is the Run the Jewels credo: when you can't trust power, you have to work things out yourselves. Songs like the slow and pummelling 36" Chain or a surging Sea Legs know that stories of sex, drugs and general bad-assery are generic fantasies – so you better find sharp new ways to tell them. Prowling the stage, through laser curls and shadows, El-P and Killer Mike are precise on the exhilarating verses of Close Your Eyes (And Count to F**k), the fantastically spiralling Early and the blunt agit-prop of Lie, Cheat, Steal, but still loose enough to enjoy themselves.
Okay, it's not always well considered: there's barely any personal misgiving or geopolitical quandary here that won't be resolved with a direct request for fellatio. And without the commanding guest verse of Gangsta Boo, the one-track-mind of Love Again comes off as a dumb frat-house anthem. Elsewhere, though, the endless adversities of the world are traced in vivid new terms and met with jaw-jutting defiance. Against so much innovation and agitation, even that hoary hip-hop cliché – "Make some motherf***ing noise!" – begins to sound refreshed.
In these skilled hands, in these insurgent times, it could be a manifesto.
