Hesitant at first, due to his own responsibilities, Meline eventually agreed and it ultimately benefited both of their projects in ways that they couldn’t have foreseen. I believe that he produced only a single track for Mike, at first, when the Atlanta rapper tried to recruit him to produce the entire release for him. Their collaborating and friendship began while Producto was still in the middle of trying to finish up his own LP, Cancer 4 Cure. Run the Jewels was recorded in the wake of both EL and Mike releasing truly powerful and critically acclaimed solo releases last year, each of which found themselves on multiple best of 2012album lists. Taking their name from a term that refers to robbing someone, while demanding that they strip themselves clean of their valuables, it’s hard not to notice the similarities between the title of another higher profile rap collab and wonder if it’s not, at least partially, a statement directed toward them, highlighting the contrast between what they each represent. Run The Jewels is the self-titled debut from the duo of Brooklyn super producer/emcee, Jaime “EL-Producto” Meline and Atlanta rap staple, Killer Mike. Best of all, it’s being released absolutely free. Today a brand new project that we’ve been highly anticipating is finally hitting the web and the team behind it is about as promising as they come. Sure, sometimes you have to wait quite a while for that jaw dropping LP to finally surface, but when it does, you know it. While the golden age of hip hop is widely considered to have ended 20 years ago, and the claims that “hip hop is dead” have continued to increase exponentially since then, you’d have to be blind to believe that there haven’t been any genuine classics released throughout that time period, keeping this artform breathing.

Even my favorite recent artists, who I’m really excited about right now– Freddie Gibbs (gangster rap), Joey Badass (golden age lyricism), and 100s (space-age pimp raps)–are resurrecting and putting new spins on genres which had previously been all but abandoned, or had the life sucked out of them through repeatedly poor execution. And I know that rap fans have been disillusioned with a lot of the material that’s been generated throughout the majority of the last two decades, so it’s nothing new, but I challenge anyone with no prior history to take the Pepsi challenge between Chief Keef and 50 Tyson, and then tell me which one of them is rapping with autism.

It’s no secret how incredibly easy it is to talk shit about rap and hip hop these days just look at youtube.

Download the killers discography free