How did Killer Mike and El-P form Run The Jewels?
Killer Mike and El-P, for many years, worked hard on their own rap careers, but, in the 2010s, they decided to join forces—and Run The Jewels was born. They became a defining hip-hop act of the decade.
Mike and El-P were first introduced to each other in 2011 by Jason DeMarco, a TV exec for the Cartoon Network. DeMarco, in addition to his TV work, was also “music lover,” as Mike put it in a 2020 interview with Thrasher Magazine, and “quietly a fucking genius.”
“He thought El and I might make great music together,” Mike went on to explain, “and he wanted me to make my version of [Ice Cube’s 1990 debut album] AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted, so he put El and I in the studio.”
Mike was scheduled to work with several other producers that he knew and liked, but he happened to end up working with El-P before anyone else. Their chemistry became immediately apparent. “We worked for three hours,” Mike recalled. “I called Jason and said he has to do the whole album. I was like, ‘I found my boss squad. This is amazing.’”
But El-P wasn’t immediately on board. “We pestered El for 90 days,” Mike claimed. “We fucking bothered the shit out of him, begged him, aggravated him as he was working on his own solo album.”
Eventually Mike managed to break El-P down somewhat, and, around the time that El was working on his third solo album Cancer 4 Cure, he agreed to produce Mike’s fifth album R.A.P. Music. That album, released in 2012, marked the first collaboration between the pair to be released.
The pair then toured together, and their friendship solidified. Eventually Mike was ready to work on a new album, but he wanted to do it with El. He managed to convince him that it was a good idea.
“We went and lived in the woods together,” he recalled. “We did Run The Jewels, five, six records, took them to [RTJ associate] Taco and Jason. Taco and Jason hit us back and said, ‘If you guys don’t do this as an album, you’re crazy.’”
The duo’s self-titled debut album was released in 2013, and it was generally very well-received. They then toured the album, with both men doing solo sets before their headline Run the Jewels one.
“El-P and Killer Mike opened for Run The Jewels,” Mike said. “Then we’d come back out on stage as Run The Jewels, and for whatever reason, people went fucking nuts. The shows received great responses. And after that, we were too smart not to be stupid. Well, we were smart enough not to do something stupid.”