Donald Trump has been president for precisely nine hours, and Killer Mike and El-P don’t want to talk politics.
Crammed against the leather cushions of the dim den at the rear of their tour bus, parked behind the Ritz in Raleigh, I ask the rapping tag-team Run the Jewels what they want to discuss. At first, they balk. “But that’s not usually what the deal is,” El-P says, laughing.
I have many questions for the pair boasting one of music’s most politically active voices. Killer Mike memorably stumped for Bernie Sanders, interviewing the candidate at length in his own Atlanta barber shop. His opinions on the race—especially on how he thought Democrats had deserted their historically black base and now deserved ballot-box payback—became mainstream headlines.
Still, it’s Mike who first takes the apolitical bait: “I actually think we got cool enough that we should be designing our own sneaker by now. What the fuck is wrong with you, sneaker companies?” Grinning, he lists off the classic shoes he’d like to redesign—the classic Puma Clyde, Nike’s 87 Air Max, and the high-top goliaths Patrick Ewing famously designed after leaving Adidas.
“Well, I’d like to talk about the bagel crisis in our country,” El-P says, finally joining in. “As a man who co-owns a delicatessen and is a born-and-raised New Yorker, it’s been very difficult for me. There aren’t good bagels in this town, not in any town. It’s a very difficult life for me, traveling.”
We all laugh, trading opinions about cream cheese and Montreal-style bagels and how, for Mike, the biscuit is the Southern comfort counterpart. He names the best biscuits in Atlanta (Buttermilk Kitchen), extols his grandmother’s cooking, and dives into the history of the almighty drop biscuit.
This keeps up for ten minutes or so, until there’s a pause and, then, an inevitable mention of politics—the events of the day, the events of the last several months, the events of last night, when Run the Jewels played Washington, D.C., on inaugural eve after a water-main break a week ago caused the second show of their ballyhooed tour to be rescheduled.
Months ago, they were offered an Inauguration Day show in D.C. but passed, vowing to stay out of the city during what would doubtlessly prove a chaotic day. Despite their reluctance, they played last night’s part perfectly, bringing out generational firebrand Zack de la Rocha for two songs and offering a mid-show lecture about their American ideals. “I don’t give a fuck who is president. This is our country,” Mike yelled, all fire and brimstone.
But a day later and a few hundred miles south here in Raleigh, the mood is decidedly different. There are no surprise guests slated for tonight, and there’s no epicenter of American democracy or oligarchy blocks away. This is, for all intents and purposes, just another sold-out show for 2,000 that happens to fall on a surreal day in American history. They didn’t even watch the inaugural address on the way into the city.
“I’m going to do a show tonight, so I can’t bring myself to sit there and watch this motherfucker say it all,” says El-P. “But by now, I know what was said.”
Mike soon jumps in, though, talking about how Trump fell for a trap set by John Lewis, the legendary civil rights leader and legislator from his “inner-city” district, as Trump might put it. He rages against Georgia’s prejudicial gerrymandering and systemic inequality in America. He speaks in great torrents of unified information, each opinion highly considered and unapologetically delivered.
Each time Mike begins one of his sermons, El-P pulls out his charcoal MacBook and flips it open, letting Mike do his thing. I ask him about it.
“Well, I have opinions. But Mike is politically active, and that’s a big difference. He’s going out and engaging in the political system. I’m just going out to vote,” he says, smirking. “But we align in our general principles. We are men who believe in an ethos, men who do not like seeing liars and abusers flourish. We are disgusted and repelled by the mistreatment of people. And, at the same time, we love weed.”
Still, an hour later, it’s El-P who takes the onstage lead with the day’s events. He becomes the evening’s preacher. Only a few songs into the set, the lights come up, bathing the stage and the house in the same pale yellow glow. El-P, hidden behind sunglasses and a black denim jacket, paces back and forth.
“We don’t usually take time to say anything of particular meaning or importance at this point during the show, but being that it’s a weird day, I will say to you guys this: We deserve a fun fucking night together,” he begins.
Then, he starts shouting.
“Let’s show these motherfuckers that our spirit cannot be broken. Let’s show these motherfuckers that they don’t fuck with our fucking friends. Let’s show these motherfuckers how we get down,” he says, bouncing on the balls of his feet near the lip of the stage. “Let’s go.”
Behind him, Mike paces, too, staring at the ceiling and the crowd, smiling and occasionally yelling “word.” He seems to have lots to say, but, throughout the night, Mike barely mentions politics, leaving much of the between-song banter to his partner. It’s as if, as a pair, they’ve decided that there will be plenty of time for outrage and analysis and policy discussions in the days, months, and years to come. Tonight is about a feeling, then, about giving the sweaty, screaming crowd a place to be pissed off and joyous at once, without weighing the room down with specifics. For an hour, the energy is communal, intoxicating.
The same scene repeats three times. As a prelude to the excoriating “Lie, Cheat, Steal,” El-P follows a pledge of solidarity to the women set to march on Washington tomorrow with a diatribe about the lying cowards they’re bound to encounter. The room erupts. And then, late in the night, he pledges solidarity with everyone in the room, explaining he knows how it feels to be let down. “I know a lot of you are feeling low. Maybe you have been there a while,” he says. Go out and make some new friends, he advises, and learn more about the world and its differing viewpoints.
In the end, that’s the message that sticks the most—that is, of breaking your own bubble of homogeneity, of learning about and from others, of expanding your worldview to include ideas and opinions and ideals that aren’t immediately your own, of letting that process make you and everyone else better. The very existence of Run the Jewels is instructive, an example of how that’s done.
Killer Mike and El-P are an odd couple, after all, the titanic, gregarious, son-of-a-cop black man from Atlanta and the sharp-tongued, sardonic, red-headed white son of Brooklyn. Onstage, the two race around one another in tight circles and coordinated zig-zags, sometimes leaning against and on each other. Offstage, it feels like sitting in on a never-ending conversation between unlikely best friends, where the quips are sharp and the rapport is instinctual. They joke about making an EP called Bagels & Biscuits, a testament to all they share despite superficial differences.
“I knew the first day that I had made a friend. Everything lined up,” Mike says. “He was everything that I remember my childhood being, even if I was in Atlanta. I knew I met somebody who just gets it. I knew we weren’t alike in every way, but we were balanced.”
“The balance is the fact that we coexist as friends, together,” El-P adds. “We have this very powerful connection running through the core of who we are that brings us together. We have already agreed on our general principles and our general core of humanity. And that opens up everything else.”