“RTJ4” voices the concerns of protesters in America

Music and activism “RTJ4” voices the concerns of protesters in America

The new album by Run the Jewels, a hip-hop duo, explores police brutality, racism and the legacy of slavery

Books, arts and culture Prospero

NO ALBUM IN recent memory has captured the current mood so successfully. “RTJ4”, a record by Run the Jewels, a hip-hop duo, is a polemic against racism in America; it was released on June 3rd while the country was wracked by protests at the killing by police of George Floyd, an African-American man. Music critics have called it “a modern protest classic” and “horribly prescient”, and with good reason. The first track, “yankee and the brave (ep.4)”, refers to a “crooked copper” and racial profiling. “walking in the snow” features the line: “you so numb you watch the cops choke out a man like me / And ‘til my voice goes from a shriek to whisper, I can’t breathe.” The lyrics were written to reference the death of Eric Garner, who was strangled by police in 2014, but they contain the last words of Mr Floyd, too.

Run the Jewels was formed in 2013, pairing El-P, a white rapper from Brooklyn, with Killer Mike, an African-American rapper who rose to fame as part of the hip-hop scene in Atlanta in the 1990s. They have long drawn attention to racial and social inequality through their work. In 2017 they dedicated their Glastonbury set to victims of the Grenfell Tower fire in London. On May 29th Killer Mike made a speech in Atlanta, telling journalists that he was “tired of seeing black men die” and urging demonstrators to “plot, plan, strategise, organise and mobilise”.

Supported by slick samples and jarring beats, that sense of purpose and urgency animates “RTJ4”. In “JU$T”, a collaboration with Pharrell Williams, the artists criticise the moral contradiction of glorifying founding fathers who promised equality but profited from slave labour: “The Thirteenth Amendment says that slavery’s abolished / Look at all these slave masters posin’ on yo’ dollar.” Mavis Staples, an 80-year-old soul musician and civil-rights activist who sang at the marches from Selma in 1965, appears hauntingly on “pulling the pin”: “There’s a grenade in my heart / And the pin is in their palm.”

Music has been intimately entwined with the civil-rights movement in America, from Billie Holiday’s lament about the lynching of black Americans, “Strange Fruit” (1939), to the rage of Nina Simone’s “Mississippi Goddam” (1964). In recent decades, hip-hop in particular has played an important role in exploring racial injustice. Originating among the tower blocks of the Bronx in the 1970s, rap was ascendant by the time of the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles in the 1990s. Ice Cube’s “AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted” (1990), Tupac Shakur’s “2Pacalypse Now” (1991) and Dr Dre’s “The Chronic” (1992) all helped define a new genre of political concept albums, each examining problems of racism, poverty and police brutality.

More recently, Kendrick Lamar has won praise for his albums “To Pimp a Butterfly” (2015) and “DAMN.” (2017). “To Pimp a Butterfly” was released a year after the Black Lives Matter movement came to prominence following Garner’s death and that of Michael Brown in Missouri; “Alright”, its most famous track, became the soundtrack of the protests. Mr Lamar’s central message that “if God got us we gon’ be alright” echoed Martin Luther King’s assurance that the arc of the moral universe “bends towards justice”.

“RTJ4”, meanwhile, finds few reasons for hope: the central theme of the album is the pain of history and the slow pace of change. Referring to Holiday’s song, “a few words for the firing squad”, the final track, is dedicated to “the truth tellers tied to the whippin’ post, left beaten, battered, bruised / For the ones whose bodies hung from a tree like a piece of strange fruit”.

As the biggest protests in America since the 1960s continue, “RTJ4” is a reminder of music’s power to both drive and respond to the national conversation. On “walking in the snow”, the rappers offer a message to those watching the news bulletins and protests from home:

“You sit there in the house on couch and watch it on TV The most you give’s a Twitter rant and call it a tragedy But truly the travesty, you’ve been robbed of your empathy.”

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