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Music

Run the Jewels Made the Most Punk Album of 2014

While so many punk bands sat on their hands while the world burned around them, Killer Mike and El-P spoke up.

Run the Jewels. Photo by Timothy Saccenti.

You could actually pinpoint the exact thought in Killer Mike’s mind that brought him to tears. “I have a 20-year-old son,” he told the crowd, a lump hitting his throat like a molotov cocktail, catching fire to his vocal cords before he could finish the last word. Through the verge of crying, he continued: “And I have a 12-year-old son,” his voice still shaking, “and I’m so afraid for them.” The room got very heavy.

This was on the night a grand jury announced the controversial decision not to indict Officer Darren Wilson for the murder of 18-year-old Mike Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. As police filled the streets in riot gear and tanks, just 12 miles south on I-70 in St. Louis, Run the Jewels, the interracial rap duo composed of Killer Mike and El-P took the stage at The Ready Room. Mike addressed the elephant in the room.

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Eventually, after telling his audience (which typically leans predominantly white) the story of how he broke down just minutes before the show and cried with his wife “like a baby,” the fear and unsteadiness in his voice gave way to rage and urgency. “It is not about race. It is not about class. It is not about color…” his tone crescendoed to a tipping point as he riled up the audience. “It is about what they killed him for. It is about poverty. It is about greed. And it is about a war machine! A war machine that uses you as a battery!” At this point, Mike was a powder keg ready to explode. “The one thing I want you to know,” he said—with one hand, he clenched the microphone and with the other, he pointed his finger down as if he was going to put it straight through the floor. “It is us against the MOTHER. FUCKING. MACHINE.”

The beat dropped and the room exploded. It was raw, it was honest, and it was the punkest thing that happened all year.

2014, as a whole, was one of the darkest in America’s recent history. The high profile stories about the respective murders of two black men—Mike Brown and Eric Garner—at the hands of white cops, with absolutely no professional or legal repercussions against the offending officers, brought racial tensions to a boiling point. Riots brought broken windows and torched buildings, millions held protests around the country, and now, two members of the NYPD have been shot point blank in their car. It’s created a national climate that seems like something out of a novel about a dystopian future where there is a constant police state.

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As horrific as the situation is considering the sharp divide on racially charged issues it’s created among Americans, you’d think, if nothing else, it’d be a prime era for punk rock, a genre born out of representing counter-cultural viewpoints, standing up for the oppressed, and fighting suppression, especially when it comes to the police and the government. But despite the near endless fodder (the now-iconic image of police in riot gear standing in front of the “Season’s Greetings” sign alone could provide enough artwork for punk seven-inches for years to come), so many prominent voices in the punk scene have been embarrassingly silent this year, sitting on their hands while the country burns around them.


Photo by Barrett Emke for Vice.com.

A strange fear has arisen in punk, a fear of inviting the stigma that comes with being labeled a “political punk band,” as if all punk somehow wasn’t inherently political to begin with. Perhaps it stems from not wanting to end up with an increasingly outdated catalog. Perhaps it’s to avoid alienating fans. And perhaps it’s due to the increasingly PC punk fans (who, let’s face it, are largely white) being too afraid to speak on behalf of oppressed minorities. Killer Mike didn’t seem too concerned with donning the “political” label. Likely because for him, it’s more personal than political. As a black male in America, he doesn’t have the privilege of choosing to be a political or apolitical artist. His back is against the wall and, as has become the rallying cry of the year, he can’t breathe.

In its early days in the late 70s and early 80s, punk was at its peak in terms of being aggressively outspoken when it comes to the flaws of the American justice system. Bands like Dead Kennedys used their artwork and lyrics to create awareness among the often thick-headed punks, and even larger non-musically inclined audiences (let’s not forget frontman Jello Biafra’s debate about censorship on Oprah and his 1979 mayoral run). It laid forth the ethos for what the genre was about: You might have the power to fuck with us, but we will always have a voice to call you out and a middle finger to point at you.

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Much of Dead Kennedys’ catalog has not aged well, as can be expected from songs written about the Reagan administration, spotlighting the evils of politicians who have long since retired or died. But the songs about larger issues—religious hypocrisy, governmental corruption, and police brutality are timeless. “Police Truck,” for example, a song about cops’ abuse of power behind the wheel of their vehicles, still holds up. As does Black Flag’s “Police Story,” whose controversial artwork featured a gun in the mouth of a cop, with the pistol’s thought bubble reading: “Make me come, faggot!” In fact, every single word of that song still (sadly) applies to what’s going on in regards to the police’s stranglehold today. “Understand we’re fighting a war we can’t win. They hate us! We hate them! We can’t win!”

Run the Jewels, and particularly Killer Mike, have taken that same frustration—the feeling of inescapable systematic suppression—and funneled it into hip-hop, a genre which has been accused in recent years of having become too materialistic, with Run the Jewels 2, an album which saw overwhelming critical success this year, landing itself high on several Best of 2014 lists, some of which at number one.

By the first line of the second song on Run the Jewels 2, El-P had set the tone: “Fuck the law, they can eat my dick.” And by the seventh song, Killer Mike, whose father was a cop, was off and running, with his poignant personal commentary on police interactions as a black father: “Please don’t lock me up in front of my kids/ And in front of my wife, man, I ain’t got a gun or a knife/ You do this and you ruin my life/ And I apologize if it seems like I got out of line, sir/ ’cause I respect the badge and the gun/ And I pray today ain't the day that you drag me away/ Right in front of my beautiful son.” And by the next song, he had let the gratuitous vitriol of his id run wild: “And if I get stopped by a crooked-ass cop, I'mma put a bullet in a pig/ And Rin Tin Tin, ah ha ha look what I did again.”

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It wasn’t just the music that was outspoken. Killer Mike brought the same sentiments of underground hip-hop (and much of the African American community) to the mainstream with appearances on several national media outlets, saying what much of white America desperately needed to hear, whether they wanted to or not. On August 20, he sat down with CNN host Brooke Baldwin and eloquently dropped truth bomb after truth bomb: “More times than not, black males are the least looked upon. We’re the least thought about in terms of education. We’re the least thought about in terms of community and police relations. But whatever this country is willing to do to them, to those black males, will eventually happen to all Americans. So I’m saying to America: if they will violate the rights of an 18-year-old African American child, what’s going to happen to anyone?” He was forceful and firm, prophetic and knowledgeable, all while still smiling and projecting an air of amiable approachability.

Two days prior to that interview, Missouri governor Jay Nixon announced he was dispatching National Guard troops to Ferguson to restore order. That day, Joyce Manor, a young pop punk band from Torrance, California—just a five mile skateboard ride from Hermosa Beach, where Black Flag originated—tweeted the following: “In light of the events in Ferguson I can't help but feel guilty that Joyce Manor is such an apolitical band. Sickened by this world.”

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Joyce Manor also released a critically acclaimed album on Epitaph Records this year, Never Hungover Again, one of the few punk albums to see crossover success, making its way onto a number of the very same Best of 2014 lists Run the Jewels 2 was on, including Wondering Sound, BrooklynVegan, and SPIN, where it hit number 32. With good reason—people like it. It’s a catchy album whose sound many are crediting as the future of the genre. But Never Hungover Again largely avoids national political or social issues, focusing more on personal themes of falling in and out of love and fighting the boredom of small town living by getting tattoos and getting high.

So instead of discussing larger, more pressing issues, Joyce Manor’s fans, as prompted by a few incidents on their summer tour, spent the large part of this year arguing about whether or not it should be culturally acceptable to stagedive (which I fully admit to getting sucked into myself).

This is not meant to be a knock on Joyce Manor or single them out specifically. Lord knows the world (especially punk nerds) needs break-up songs and for what it’s worth, “Catalina Fight Song” is a ripper. And if you asked the band’s members, they’d assuredly put Ferguson an infinite number of notches above stagediving on the level of importance among social issues. It’s more of an example of the softening of the young punk scene around them and its skewed priorities. Much of it has become far too inwardly focused, directing its “politicking” towards things within its own little bubble, like language policing, creating theoretical safe spaces, and what is or is not a part “DIY culture.”

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“To be fair, that shit is totally important, particularly in situations where people are—wittingly or not—bumming people out or making people feel unsafe,” says Brendan Kelly, whose long-running Chicago-based punk band The Lawrence Arms released their comeback album of sorts this year, Metropole. “But for whatever reason, the lion’s share of people who care about these issues at all are privileged white young people—in punk rock, on university campuses, or both. It's white kids yelling at white kids about what they imagine upsets non-white kids who aren't part of their pissy little debate club anyway.”

“The fire and outrage exists. It's just been drowned out by louder punks complaining more furiously about much less,” says Kelly who is quick to cite older, long-running acts like Winnipeg's Propagandhi who are still making noise and working to educate people, either through their live shows or online. Similarly, punk elderstatesmen Paint It Black, despite being less musically active over this last year, are still respected voices and are politically engaging daily in the scene as well. Former Paint It Black guitarist-turned-solo-artist Dave Hause also released a song last month called “Season’s Greetings from Ferguson” about reactions to the Ferguson protesters through the lens of white privilege. Even Anti-Flag, a band who often ends up as the butt of the unimpressed punks’ jokes for being too entry-level punk (Mohawks 101, if you will) are still flying the flag of political activism, as they have been since 1988.

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“We have a song—written in ‘96—called ‘Fuck Police Brutality,’” says Anti-Flag bassist Chris Barker a.k.a. Chris No. 2. “We play it still. We still think it's an important sentiment. Obviously it is currently topical but police violence is not happening in a vacuum, it's not only relative to right now. It seems more than ever, there is a feeling that in punk rock it's OK to be passive about current events. It's frustrating but feels similar to when we were a band pre-September 11, 2001. We are at the bottom of the cycle of music as a movement. While it might not be the most lucrative career-wise, we only know one way to operate.”

That is, as far as more commercially viable punk goes, according to No. 2. “The other side is that punk is just as politically active as ever. There are bands all over the world trying to keep the powerful in check, it's just not viable in the mainstream right now.”

As punk drifts further towards the mainstream, most bands at Joyce Manor’s level who are seeing some reasonable level of success aren’t exactly getting rich, but there’s just enough stability in it as a career to be inclined to play it safe. Kind of like working a shitty entry-level job where you fight the urge to tell your asshole boss to fuck off because hey, at least it’s a paycheck.

No band—especially a band that aligns itself with punk—should feel any sort of pressure to be apolitical. You can write the rules of your own band. You’re sickened with the world? You goddamn should be. Write a song about it. Educate your fans. Speak up. Even if it means them disagreeing with you. You might lose a fan but you become a part of something bigger.

Punk could take a lesson from Run the Jewels 2 and what Killer Mike and El-P did this year. After all, it’s us—all of us—against the mother fucking machine.

Dan Ozzi is on Twitter - @danozzi