Run the Jewels Tickets

Like many great things, Run The Jewels wasn’t ever really supposed to be a thing. Back in 2012, Brooklyn rapper and producer El-P had just produced an album by Atlanta MC Killer Mike. Encouraged by the results, the two united for a project titled Run The Jewels, completely unprepared for their 2013 album’s resounding impact. The duo’s aggressive beats and alternately comical and profound lyrics overshadowed their individual efforts and Run The Jewels inevitably became much more than one and done.

However successful their debut outing was, it paled in comparison to Run The Jewels’ chaotically brilliant second album. RTJ2 catapulted the duo into the mainstream, bolstered by inspired collaborations with Zack de la Rocha (Rage Against The Machine), Travis Barker (Blink-182), Diane Coffee and Gangster Boo. Shortly after, a runaway online joke resulted in Meow The Jewels, a remixed version of RTJ2 that replaced all the music with cat samples.

By now, expectations for each successive return were set to fever pitch. Run The Jewels’ popularity extended far beyond standard hip hop circles, cementing their status as one of the genre’s premier duos. Rather than be psyched out by the furore, Run The Jewels seemed elevated by it, returning in 2018 with another critically acclaimed album RTJ3. RATM’s de la Rocha returned again, this time alongside an even more impressive list of guest stars that included Danny Brown, Kamasi Washington and Tunde Adebimpe (TV On The Radio).

By now, El-P and Killer Mike were becoming household names in their own rights, particularly Mike, via Trigger Warning With Killer Mike, a Netflix series examining the issues plaguing Black America. Over the course of the BLM movement and the 2020 presidential election, Mike also became an increasingly vocal presence in domestic politics and social activism.

Run The Jewels’ fourth album, predictably titled RTJ4, arrived in summer 2020, a moment in time that was desperately in need of Mike and El-P’s perspective on politics, morality, society and America’s search for its soul and identity. Once again, it was hailed as a contemporary hip hop masterpiece.

In May 2021, Run The Jewels announced four UK tour dates for June 2022 in London, Glasgow, Birmingham and Manchester.