Run The Jewels — RTJ4

Hip-hop
Written By Akhil Srivatsan

I’m not American, but a lot of the content I (and let’s face it, most of us) consume is American / popularised by Americans. This is one of many reasons why, to many, police brutality in America and the murder of George Floyd isn’t just an American issue, but a global one. Another reason, of course, is that minorities tend to be treated poorly by law enforcement in much of the world.

RTJ4, Run the Jewel’s fourth album, is a hip-hop album made for this particular moment in history, by two rappers who’ve been rapping about a lot of these issues throughout their careers, including in their first three albums as Run The Jewels. It’s an evocative listen.

Links to album (free download) and donations here.

The Music Box
Pinegrove – Pinegrove on Audiotree Live
Pinegrove – Pinegrove on Audiotree Live

In this piece, I navigate the intricate soundscapes of Pinegrove's Audiotree performance, set against the backdrop of the bustling city and its ubiquitous cafes. My exploration of indie studio sounds, alongside an introspective study of key indie bands, unravels a tale of life, hope, rejection, and the unending rhythm of the urban existence.

Basement – Colourmeinkindness
Basement – Colourmeinkindness

I don’t believe I’m in a position to share any facts about the band Basement except that, in the 2010s, they played lightly distorted mildly noisy alternative rock. And that in 2012, they recorded an album called Colourmeinkindness, which has a sound that serves as a great backing track for the part of one’s life that’s punctuated by deeply introspective walks in the blistering heat.

12 RODS – My Year (This Is Going To Be)
12 RODS – My Year (This Is Going To Be)

12 RODS sit high on the list of all-time favourites I never expected to hear from again; in fact, until a week ago, they perhaps sat atop that list. A week ago, that is, when they released their latest single, My Year (This Is Going To Be), and announced an album to be released later this year, their first since 2002’s Lost Time.

Lady Gaga – The Fame Monster
Lady Gaga – The Fame Monster

The hypermodel before me sticks her arm out a couple feet to take what must be an immaculately captured self-portrait that’d put Van Gogh’s to shame. In doing so, she reveals her pronounced wristbones, bony arms, pale and sunken pits, textbook indicators of poor nourishment.

Nouvelle Vague – Nouvelle Vague
Nouvelle Vague – Nouvelle Vague

The one thing that kept her going through a set was the promise of a beer, some fries, and a big burger on the other end. As she breezed through one lounge cover after another – from a smouldering rendition of Love Will Tear Us Apart through an absent-minded interpretation of Making Plans For Nigel to a non-punk version Teenage Kicks – all she would visualise was that meal: bar food on bar china.

Radiohead – The Bends
Radiohead – The Bends

You’re in mainland Europe – somewhere in the continent’s northwest. Alone in an English pub run by the English, frequented by the English. Most brownfolk with a sense of history would likely find much of the imagery here discomforting, but most would overlook it. The pub’s been playing the Bends, all the way from Planet Telex on; this is a strange sort of place.

Nothing – Tired of Tomorrow
Nothing – Tired of Tomorrow

Sitting in the world’s most absurd café after completing the world’s most meandering walk, your phone suggests you listen to Nothing’s Famine Asylum off of their 2020 album, The Great Dismal. You’re reminded of an earlier album by the same band as a beskirted post-Soviet NFT scamster asks a vaguely Mediterranean dad-bodied man wearing a deep blue TOMMY JEANS tee to take a photo.

Bartika Eam Rai – Bimbaakash
Bartika Eam Rai – Bimbaakash

Not all sadness is the same dad, he was trying to explain to his ageing father. Pa had spent much of the mid-seventies damming one of India’s major rivers with other ‘sons and daughters of the newly independent nation’. Come rain, come sleet, they bored through terrain, mixed concrete, fixed slabs, built barricades against portented landslides.

Weezer – Weezer (Blue Album)
Weezer – Weezer (Blue Album)

The thing nobody seems to ask about the boy who cried wolf is why Bubby would do such a thing. What would prompt an otherwise standard-issue ten-year-old – likely even-tempered and straight-laced – to, on seemingly unconnected days, run through his village screaming about a wolf he’s seen? Aesop blames it on boredom and naughtiness but eventually faults the kid.

Talk Talk – Spirit of Eden
Talk Talk – Spirit of Eden

Of course it isn’t fair that if you were to split the world’s population in two halves, you would find 4 billion people, on the one hand, who give more than they’re given in return, and 4 billion, on the other, who are given more than they give. Of course it isn’t fair that there’s no real reason for this except the inherent unfairness of the world, what it means to be.

Akhil Srivatsan
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