RTJ2

Both emcees are incredibly versatile, switching up speed, style and tone, playing off each other one minute, one-upping each other the next.

RTJ2 is the rare sequel that bests the beloved original in almost every facet.

An album like RTJ2 is rare. Decades from now, this album may just be revered as one of the best hip-hop records of our era, the total synchronicity of two talented artists reaching the apex of their prime.

The sequel takes the simplistic thrills of the debut and expands the duo’s natural chemistry. With Killer Mike grounded at the album’s emotional core, El-P is free to indulge in his intrepid production tendencies.

Whether it's rage or just two guys trying to make each other laugh with dark humor, RTJ2 stands tall in a year of weak hip-hop.

Run The Jewels 2 is one of the best albums of the year.

RTJ2 is filled with such thoughtful, penetrating moments, tightly wound up in 11 bona fide bangers.

Cranking the urgency and confrontation of last year's self-titled debut to neck-breaking intensity, RTJ2 is an urgent, paranoid album for a violent, panicked time.

Rage Against the Machine’s Zack de la Rocha, Travis Barker, Diane Coffee, the filthy-mouthed Gangsta Boo...they all contribute to the depth of RTJ2 but never outshine the stars of Render and Meline, despite all giving the best performances of their careers in some time.

Sounding like nothing else and answering to nobody but its creators, Run the Jewels 2 is in a class by itself.

Yet because the beats are so fierce and the flows so varied, there is no slogging through this 39-minute hurricane. It's been a minute, but RTJ have reminded us that, yes, rap music can be fun and opinionated simultaneously.

RTJ2 is a fierce release.

The only thing you really need to know is that no matter how you cop RTJ2, whether it's as a free digital download, a physical copy from Mass Appeal or the super-expensive "I'm On The Guestlist" supporter package you're getting more than your money's worth.

From "Jeopardy" on, Run the Jewels 2 is uppercut after uppercut.

Throughout RTJ2 [El-P] holds his own rhyming alongside a superior wordsmith.

Headphone rap of the highest order, tracks on this sequel hum and groove, laced with texture and hidden sonic accents.

Run The Jewels 2 is the logical follow up to Run The Jewels; it's bigger, bolder, and feels like a punch to the gut that you'll be feeling for weeks.

RTJ2 isn’t quite the game-changer The Money Store was, but it makes no attempt to hide its desire to knock its progenitors out cold and scamper off with the crown.

This is the sound of two mature rap gentlemen throwing it up for one of hiphop's most enduring, if not always endearing, charms: utter immaturity. [Dec 2014, p.54]

On every possible level, this album is a total blast. [Jan 2015, p.128]

This quick-fire sequel brutally updates the sabre-sharp formula. [Dec 2014, p.93]

While the duo deliver hard-nosed disses at a rate of knots. Early, meanwhile, matches distorted synth with an old-school storytelling piece about pursuit and arrest by the police. It’s an unrelenting style, which may sound like overkill to some, but there’s no disputing its power and sophisticated composition.

Run The Jewels 2 is a great listen because of the artistry on display, but it's the pent-up frustration that takes it into the stratosphere, that makes you want to hug your loved ones and thank god for each breath while you set fire to the neighborhood.

On their second album as Run the Jewels, noise-loving Brooklyn rapper-producer El-P and Atlanta's Killer Mike make the most explosive hip-hop you'll hear all year.

RTJ2 is replete with razor-sharp lyricism and clattering, abrasive production.

This is a performance, a showcase of crazy that does nothing but dazzle.

2's developments in subtlety and humor.

If their first album acted as the duo’s thesis statement, the two MCs laying out the blueprint to what they wanted to accomplish, then this second is a laser-focused execution of that idea, of never letting up and never sugar-coating their sound to fit into any particular lane. There won’t be another album that comes out this year that sounds anything like this one.

It’s the sheer energy on display that pushes Run The Jewels 2 through. The production is popping throughout, funky as hell, and often dotted with unexpected twists and turns.

These are pummeling cyber-howls, these songs.

If the first album was the supernova, RTJ2 is the RTJ universe forming, proving that Mike and El-P's one-off can be a going, and ever growing, concern.

Run The Jewels has again pushed rap away from regular rhythms and rhymes and into territories that they’re still calculating the dimensions of. May they never reach the sum of such remarkable parts and continue to exclusively Run Them Jewels fast.