Kill Your Masters: Run The Jewels and the World That Made Them by Jaap van der Doelen

 

Credit: University of Georgia Press

 

 

 

Peter Biello: Coming up in this episode.

Orlando Montoya: How political of a group are they on the..you know, sort of on the range of, you know, Karen Carpenter on one side and Rage on the other?

Jaap van der Doelen: They made this song in response to a tragedy, and then around the time that it comes out, another extremely similar tragedy has happened.

Peter Biello: So how many rap songs do you know reference the 13th Amendment directly? This podcast from Georgia Public Broadcasting highlights books with Georgia Connections hosted by two of your favorite public radio book nerds, who also happen to be your hosts of All Things Considered on GPB Radio. I'm Peter Biello.

Orlando Montoya: And I'm Orlando Montoya. Thanks for joining us as we introduce you to authors, their writings and the insights behind their stories mixed with our own thoughts and ideas on just what gives these works the Narrative Edge.

Peter Biello: Orlando. I've got a story for you to kick things off today. All right, let's hear it. So I moved to Atlanta just about three years ago now, and I was telling my friends in New England that I was moving to Atlanta. And one of my friends, a friend who's really big into the music scene and he's got tastes I trust, He says, Say hi to Killer Mike for me.

Orlando Montoya: Yeah, like you. Like you're going to know him, right?

Peter Biello: Like he's standing at the airport, like, with a welcoming committee. And I got to be honest, I kind of said to him. Oh yeah, ha ha. And I was like, who's killer Mike? Like, I honestly did not know. I'm not plugged into the hip hop world. And though I had heard the name Killer Mike had never really registered. Do you know anything about Killer Mike?

Orlando Montoya: I think I might have saw him at the Peach Drop this year. I think he was there.

Peter Biello: Okay. You think?

Orlando Montoya: I think he could have been there. I could have looked at him and I could have heard him. But I don't know who he is.

Peter Biello: So you were there to celebrate New Year's, as Atlantans, watching the giant peach drop?

Orlando Montoya: I was. I was there to just see the peach drop.

Peter Biello: Okay. Well, I think my friend's comment about Killer Mike just shows how Atlanta Killer Mike is, how associated he is with the city's brand. I mean, you may remember back in 2020, this was before I was here in Georgia during the riots in Atlanta, after George Floyd was killed, he got on television and asked people to stop burning down their city.

Killer Mike: We don't want to see Targets burning. We want to see the system that sets up for systemic racism burnt to the ground.

Peter Biello: And the description of this televised speech, that audio there from Atlanta News First, opens up the book we're going to be talking about on the podcast today. It's called Kill Your Masters: Run the Jewels And the World That Made Them Jaap van der Doelen, a journalist based out of the Netherlands.

Orlando Montoya: So a guy from the Netherlands is writing about an Atlanta rapper.

Peter Biello: Yeah. And of course, Run the Jewels. One half of Run the Jewels is Killer Mike. Yeah. Jaap van der Doelen was blogging before blogging was truly known as a way to get noticed in your sphere of influence. He was just genuinely in love with hip hop, and he knew Killer Mike and El-P, a.k.a. Jamie Meline, in the 90s and aughts when they were doing their own solo thing, or with groups that broke up before Run the Jewels put out their first album in 2013.

Orlando Montoya: So like I said, I have not heard of these people, so can you give me a sense of what they sound like musically?

Peter Biello: Sure. Yeah. Let's play some short clips. There's some really political stuff we're going to get into how political they are. Here's Lie, Cheat and Steal. By whom? And that's a great song about conditions that can force you into a life of crime. Killer Mike there very interested in systems just like he was with that speech he gave in 2020. Here's another song. Pharrell Williams is the voice behind the hook in this social commentary, JU$T

Peter Biello: So how many rap songs do you know reference the 13th Amendment directly? This song also features Zack de la Rocha of Rage Against the Machine. You know, Rage Against the Machine?

Orlando Montoya: I know, I know. Zack de La Rocha and Rage. Yeah.

Peter Biello: There's some interesting political alignment between Run the Jewels and Rage Against the Machine. They're cut from the same ideological cloth, you might say. And then there are some songs that are just fun. There's they're kind of dissonant. They're ear wormy. El-P takes the hook here in ooh la la.

Peter Biello: Yeah. Try to get that out of your head for the rest of today.

Orlando Montoya: That that was pretty catchy. Now, what I'm interested in is I don't really care so much about the artist. I don't know the artist. So. But I think it could be any book about any artist could be great if it tells a story, you know where they come from, you know, How many books do you read that you don't know the person at all, but you get into them and you sort of hear their story. So what I'm interested in is like where they're from and where they're going.

Peter Biello: Yeah. So. El-P, Jamie Meline, was from Brooklyn and Killer Mike grew up here in Atlanta, and they kind of operated in different worlds like Killer Mike, raised in Atlanta, and then Jamie Meline raised by a single mother in Brooklyn. And both of them were into hip hop at an early age and just stuck with it and kept with that obsession. So they came from those places. And it was actually thanks to a guy working at Adult Swim, you know, right on William Street a couple of blocks away. You familiar with Adult Swim?

Orlando Montoya: I know that one, yeah.

Peter Biello: What's your favorite Adult Swim show?

Orlando Montoya: I guess you got me. I didn't know.

Peter Biello: Anything about it. You know Rick and Morty. No, not a fan of Rick and Morty. Steve Brule?

Orlando Montoya: No, never heard of it.

Peter Biello: Check it Out with Steve Brule?

Orlando Montoya: I've never heard of it.

Peter Biello: Anyway. Very strange, edgy cartoons, comedy, Tim and Eric Show. I'm a huge fan. Like when I first moved to Atlanta and I just happened to be walking around the neighborhood where GPB is. You walk by this building and there's a statue of Mr. Poopybutthole out there.

Orlando Montoya: And so they met there?

Peter Biello: So Adult Swim, they were doing really well in around 2011, 2012, and they had a guy there. His name is Jason DeMarco, who wanted to essentially create his own bumper music for the show. They wanted something original and cool. And so they contacted musicians who sort of had an edge to them. Maybe they were a little weird at this point. Killer Mike and El-P, didn't really know each other, so Jason DeMarco brought them together and asked them to sort of collaborate on a full length Killer Mike Solo album, which was going to be released on William Street Records, William Street, just a few blocks away from here. And when they met, thanks to Jason DeMarco, the chemistry was just so good between them that you're just like, Let's just do a whole album together. That was the first Run The Jewels album, which launched in 2013.

Orlando Montoya: Okay, so Run The Jewels is Jamie Meline and Killer Mike?

Peter Biello: Yep.

Orlando Montoya: Okay. And the author was interested in Killer Mike and El-P long ago. So how old were they all when this sort of happened?

Peter Biello: This was like they're pushing 40 at this point and that is kind of unusual. Rappers usually do the things that make them famous when they're in their 20s.

Orlando Montoya: So that these guys were they like accountants before or what were they?

Peter Biello: Well, they were having they were having solo careers and El-P had been doing his own thing. He was running a label, too, and that kind of fell apart. Killer Mike had some struggles with getting his another album out in the aughts. That was more to do with, you know, corporate bureaucracy than any kind of talent he had. The talent is just there was some bureaucratic nightmare going on. So it was a weird time for Killer Mike. There was. And around this time they were both kind of thinking about throwing in the towel. Jaap van der Doelen wrote about this moment and about the way the industry was changing at that time.

Jaap van der Doelen: The implosion of their solo careers also mirrors the collapse of the CD format and a lot of changes in the music industry. But them finding each other and forming this new group. They were also very much interested in experimenting with new ways of publishing music, of finding audiences, and they found a whole new audience through that and basically were pioneering the streaming media and the Internet as a as a platform to release music through at a time when that was all very much up in the air, how these type of things would look.

Peter Biello: So how it looked for them was they released this full Run the Jewels album on the Adult Swim website for free download, and it was a huge success. And so they decided to make another album. And in total they launched four studio albums of original music and put them all up for free download on the Internet.

Orlando Montoya: 2013. Gosh, what was I doing in 2013 that I missed all of that?

Peter Biello: Not watching Adult Swim or listening to Run the Jewels apparently.

Orlando Montoya: But how did they how did they even make money on streaming? It's like you can't.

Peter Biello: Well not with that platform, right? If you just put it up as a free mp3 download, you can't. But they did tour, they sold merch, they sold CD's for people who wanted that kind of thing. Of course, that was sort of falling out of favor. They produced vinyl to people are collecting vinyl still to this day and. Okay. So one funny story here was that after they developed some somewhat of a following, they sent out a funny promotional email to their fans that said they do all sorts of silly things for pledge levels like public radio should really get in on this. Like, for example, for a $200,000, you could get the We are Gordon Ramsay package where Run the Jewels would go to your restaurant of choice uninvited and attempt to force the staff there to change their menu. And they would berate the staff the whole time to quote hilarious effect

Orlando Montoya: They're making.....wha?

Peter Biello: To my knowledge, no one took them up on that, but they offered it as a joke. I mean, they offered it as a joke, but they did offer a different one. And this was the Meow the Jewels package, which for $40,000 they would remix their second album, Run the Jewels II, to using nothing but cat sounds for music. And some fan saw this joke and said, You know what? I'm going to raise that money. And they did it. And the result is Meow the Jewels.

Peter Biello: So yeah.

Orlando Montoya: Cats and politics. Is this what I'm hearing?

Peter Biello: Cat sounds. That one's called Lie, Cheat, Meow.

Orlando Montoya: And it's about politics.

Peter Biello: Yeah. I mean, it's the same song, right? It's the same lyrics. We played a little bit of lie, cheat, steal earlier, but the cat sounds mixed underneath.

Orlando Montoya: You mentioned their political before. How political of a group are they on the, you know, sort of on the range of, you know, Karen Carpenter on one side and Rage on the other?

Peter Biello: They're more they're closer to Rage, I would say. Jaap van der Doelen pointed out how the group focuses on the plight of oppressed people, especially black people who live in fear of the police. A lot of songs about the police, of course, Killer Mike has family members who are police officers, so he recognizes both sides of it, but definitely raps a lot more about the side experienced by people who are oppressed. And I asked yet Jaap van der Doelen if he had a song, an example of a song that really stood out when it came to addressing that kind of social concern.

Jaap van der Doelen: I think the greatest example of this is also a very tragic one. It's Walking in the Snow on Run the Jewels' 4th album, and there was a moment in there were Killer Mike raps about being choked by a police officer.

Jaap van der Doelen: That song came out very shortly after the murder of George Floyd, but it was actually recorded in response to the murder of Eric Garner, the tragedies in themselves. But there's an even bigger tragedy. And the fact that they keep on repeating that they made this song in response to a tragedy and then around the time that it comes out, another extremely similar tragedy has happened. And I think it underscores how necessary it is to to keep on responding and grappling with these instances and not turn a blind eye towards them.

Orlando Montoya: So why should people who aren't interested in Killer Mike or people who don't know about him at all, why should someone pick up this book? Like I said, I am completely, completely open to the idea that I can learn about somebody new, somebody different, somebody I might not even think that I would like. As long as there's a story or a narrative or something.

Peter Biello: This book is as much about Run the Jewels as it is about the other half of its subtitle. Right? The World that Made Them. What were the conditions like in the 90s for not just this group, but all rappers trying to make a name for themselves? It's a comment on the technology that people use to get their music. Like in the 90s, the CD was king, right? And then Napster and LimeWire come along and everything's downloaded and pirated. And it's hard for artists to make money. And if you can't make money, it's harder to make the art that you're trying to make. So they sort of witnessed that transition and you get to see what artists are doing, how they're making their names. Is it this, you know, is it a station in New York that's making making their name known? Is it some kind of new collaboration with a television station like they did with Adult Swim? So they follow that. So there's one that's one part of it. The other part is, you know, they're finding a way to comment on this thing that rappers have been commenting on for a long time, which is police brutality. So I think that part is interesting. Even if you're not a fan of Run the Jewels, which I wasn't when I started reading this book, I didn't know them that well. And, you know, I'd be reading this book, I'd open up Spotify and I'd sort of say, okay, what is the song that Jaap van der Doelen is, is talking about? And I'd be like, All right, I get what he's saying there. That makes sense.

Orlando Montoya: What gives this book the Narrative Edge then.

Peter Biello: While it is enjoyable for those who aren't fans of Run the Jewels, this was written by a fan of Run the Jewels.  Clearly Jaap van der Doelen loves these guys. He's also good at reminding people of the context. And a lot of that context was focused on Killer Mike. Killer Mike was, for example, close to Bernie Sanders during his presidential runs in 2016 and 2020. Killer Mike and Bernie Sanders spoke on camera at Killer Mike's Barber Shop on Edgewood Avenue, which I didn't know he had a barber shop on Edgewood Avenue. And there are a couple of locations as well around town. So anyway, while Killer Mike started to become associated with the far left, he also remained a member of the NHRA, pointing out that guns helped prevent lynchings when such things were commonplace in the South. And you remember that speech that Killer Mike gave during the riots in 2020?

Orlando Montoya: George Floyd.

Peter Biello: Yeah. So initially Killer Mike didn't want to get involved, didn't want to say anything. But then colleagues convinced him that it was a good idea and he thought about the gentrification that would happen if his own businesses were burned down. Which does, to some extent, make the call to stop burning Atlanta seem less noble. Now, the author does point out that Killer Mike had a genuine concern for gentrification, that if these black businesses were burned down, white billionaire developers would swoop in and gentrify the neighborhood, which we know Atlanta. Right. You know, gentrification has been a thing since the Olympics in the mid-nineties. So there's a mingling of self-interest and idealism there. And the fact that Jaap van der Doelen manages to capture both and still make Killer Mike and El-P endearing and admirable is a credit to his skill as a writer here.

Orlando Montoya: Are they like millionaires now? Should we really be?

Peter Biello: There is no count on the amount of dollars they now possess in this book. But you, I'm guessing. Yes. I mean.

Orlando Montoya: They live in they have jets they go around with 50 buses.

Peter Biello: You know, they're not touring a whole lot. I wanted to go see one of their shows after reading this book and I looked at their website and they've only got one lined up in North Carolina in June. And unfortunately, I can't go. But.

Orlando Montoya: So you're now a fan?

Peter Biello: But I am a fan now. I browsing their website. I was kind of amused that they've they've got so much for sale now. Like they're selling a beer pong set, a branded beer pong set. They've got their own cannabis partnership not available in Georgia. Of course they sell a Paloma cocktail and of course, a lot of a lot of clothing with their their their signature symbol, which is on the. On every album cover that they've got, which is one hand holding like one fist holding a chain and then the other holding a mock gun. So I'm doing it right now in the studio and they since dropped the chain, so you see just a fist and a gun pointed at it. That's the Run the Jewels symbol. Run the Jewels, of course, taken from LL Cool J song. Basically, the song was about a rapper who's washed out down on his luck and resorts to robbery. So running the jewels are saying, Give me your chain.

Orlando Montoya: All right. Well, the book is called Kill Your Masters: Run the Jewels and the World That Made Them by Jaap van der Doelen. Peter, thanks for telling me about it.

Peter Biello: You're very welcome.

Orlando Montoya: Thanks for listening to Narrative Edge. We'll be back in two weeks with a brand new episode. This podcast is a production of Georgia Public Broadcasting. Find us online at GPB.org/NarrativeEdge

Peter Biello: You can also catch us on the Daily News podcast Georgia Today for a concise update on the latest news in Georgia. For more on that and all of our podcasts, go to GPB.org/Podcasts