Equal parts red-hot fire and cold hard reality, Killer Mike and El-P’s third album as Run The Jewels is a muscular call to arms.
Run the Jewels 3 is an album that only slows down to so it can shift into a higher gear. 2016 may have been bleak, but thanks to Run The Jewels, 2017 will start off on the right.
RTJ3 was the best Christmas present we never knew we asked for.
RTJ3 is an excellent bookend to 2016, but it’s best used as a guide to the future, 2017 and beyond.
Run the Jewels 3 is a rap armoury for hard times, a hip-hop bullhorn that afflicts the comfortable and comforts the afflicted.
Nobody fresh out of the blocks could ever make a record this vital sound quite so effortless.
Furious and hungry -- with endlessly quotable lyrical zingers to spare -- RTJ3's potency isn't as immediate as RTJ2. However, once it digs its claws in, RTJ3 reveals itself as their best work to date.
One of the few positives of the political shit-storm that struck the US in 2016 is that it seems to have fired up Run the Jewels once more, helping the two rappers reach previously untouched heights.
RTJ3 is essentially the Run the Jewels manifesto, an outpouring of rage and defiance that never loses sight of the objectives: rallying the troops, holding all accountable, and toppling oppression.
Run The Jewels 3 is the most practiced, polished, and ambitious project from Run The Jewels yet, without the loss of their self-made swagger.
Their third record, simply titled Run the Jewels 3, further expands the group’s punishing sound while remaining rooted in the unique alphabet that made them resonate in the first place.
Mike and El-P are on the top of their game throughout RTJ3, tag-teaming seamlessly like Kanye and Jay(-)Z on “Otis” or Tyler, The Creator and Earl Sweatshirt on “AssMilk” – they hit verses back and forth as smoothly as a ball in a table tennis rally.
I also think it’s better than the first or second installments: slightly more ambitious and slightly more layered.
RTJ3 can safely, accurately, and comprehensively be described as “a third Run The Jewels album.” This is a good thing. The albums are differentiated from each other not by vast stylistic shifts but by highlights—a verse or a punchline or a particularly terse beat, all of which are present here.
The blessing and the curse of Run the Jewels 3 is that it’s still a Run the Jewels album, a promise that every song is good, nothing is bad, and depending on your mood you’ll either bask in the lack of tempo changes, pulchritudinous song structures, and surprising hooks, or you’ll seek out a more colorful record.
RTJ 3 is both a sprinter’s dip and a victory lap – it is neither as sinewy as RTJ 1 nor as effusively vivacious as 2014’s RTJ 2, but still finds itself imbibed with the kind of assured professionalism that is only permitted to those who have previously done enough to be granted a low-pressure outing.
RTJ 3 isn’t the towering, thunderous album that ultimately became RTJ 2, but to consider it a lesser effort would be a fool’s errand. Rather, it’s an impacting, steadfast achievement all its own, and one that will only continue to elevate the duo’s skyrocketing cultural status.
The unlikely MC tag team's incontestable third rages hard over bass-driven beats positively thrumming with vitality.
Run the Jewels returns with their most politically charged effort yet.
RTJ3 is the pair's most focused and mature work to date.
Such complexities not only make RTJ3 the most accomplished chapter in the duo's trilogy of LPs, but will also leave fans eagerly awaiting the next installment in what's proving to be one of hip-hop's most boldly distinctive discographies.
Following RTJ2, this record is even harder, even darker and somehow even angrier.
This album is full of bangers and achieves what so many hip-hop heads, old and new, are longing for: music with a message, loud and clear.
The formula is probably becoming familiar, but its time is now.
Run the Jewels can still detonate rhymes like a Molotov cocktail lobbed into a CVS, but now they're strategizing for the long war ahead.
RTJ3 ultimately mirrors the sentiment of too many movie franchise sequels that make the brand go stale.
For the most part, Run the Jewels 3 is not intent on breaking new ground but rather on cementing the fruitful dynamic between El-P and Killer Mike.
Thankfully there’s enough gold at hand to excuse Run The Jewels for getting a little bit carried away with their own runaway success.
Run the Jewels 3's status as a credible but not quite compelling call to arms serves as a reminder of how difficult hip-hop partnerships are to sustain and how much the genre relies on novelty and innovation.
‘Run the Jewels 3’ is the most unknown and well-known album I know. At the time of this review, the album has 2013 user ratings (which is coincidentally the year that their debut was released), but I can’t shake the feeling that there should be more. In fact, the album itself poses a lot of interesting questions:
FIRST, are the songs good? Yes, and don’t expect anything less! There are the famous singles like “Legend Has It” and “2100”, which are ... read more
i feel like you can only begin to truly understand this album if you are of jewish heritage...
Overall, I love this album, I'd argue that RTJ2 is definitely a superior album, but still this definitely still sonically feels like a musical advancement for the duo and i'm in no way disappointed. The great songwriting found on RTJ2 isn't quite as potent here, in fact this album is more what I would have expected them to follow up their first album with, I feel like this should have been RTJ2 and RTJ2 should be RTJ3. To me, this is essentially the first album but now the beats are harder, the ... read more
1 | Down 3:29 feat. Joi | 87 |
2 | Talk To Me 2:31 | 89 |
3 | Legend Has It 3:25 | 96 |
4 | Call Ticketron 3:18 | 89 |
5 | Hey Kids (Bumaye) 3:11 feat. Danny Brown | 90 |
6 | Stay Gold 3:27 | 81 |
7 | Don't Get Captured 3:12 | 84 |
8 | Thieves! (Screamed the Ghost) 4:02 feat. Tunde Adebimpe | 86 |
9 | 2100 4:01 feat. BOOTS | 93 |
10 | Panther Like a Panther (Miracle Mix) 3:41 feat. Trina | 89 |
11 | Everybody Stay Calm 2:58 | 85 |
12 | Oh Mama 3:36 | 84 |
13 | Thursday in the Danger Room 4:22 feat. Kamasi Washington | 90 |
14 | A Report to the Shareholders / Kill Your Masters 6:14 | 95 |
#4 | / | Paste |
#7 | / | The Skinny |
#10 | / | Slant Magazine |
#16 | / | New York Daily News |
#19 | / | Earbuddy |
#19 | / | Treble |
#22 | / | Rough Trade |
#29 | / | Pitchfork |
#31 | / | Fopp |
#32 | / | The Alternative |