I can’t remember exactly where I first heard about Run The Jewels or “RTJ” as they and their fans refer to them. I’m pretty sure it was somewhere on the Internet. The oldest e-mail I have from their mailing list is September of 2014 prior to their release of their second album RTJ2. I decided to try out the first album because they made it available to download for free (well, in return for your e-mail address) and they’ve done that with their follow up albums. You can get all three at their web site.

Killer Mike of RTJ is an activist and has made the rounds on many talk shows like Stephen Colbert. He was outspoken during the 2016 election, campaigning for Bernie Sanders. He did several interviews about the violence in Ferguson.

Interestingly, Jaime Meline, the other half of RTJ, used his real first name in the e-mails from their mailing list until the beginning of 2106 when he started to use EL-P. And then there’s Meow The Jewels, which I somehow totally missed and am still not sure I get.

I happened to see their show on Sunday of Weekend One of Austin City Limits festival. In addition to both weekends of ACL Festival, they played to a packed house at Stubb’s the first Friday night and then did the taping this past Saturday. Both the festival show with its massive crowd and the smaller taping audience were very energetic. The taping audience was fairly sparse, probably due to Weekend Two of the festival along with OU weekend.

You can find ACLs review of the taping on their blog. It will air later this season (locally on KLRU). As she usually does, ACL producer Leslie Nichols shared the set list from her Twitter account. You can keep tabs on the schedule and upcoming tapings on their site as well.

You can find my previous taping posts going back to 2008 here.