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Run the Jewels Perform Energetic Tiny Desk Concert for NPR

blame it on Patrick Glynn February 6, 2017
run-the-jewels-npr-tiny-desk

NPR’s Tiny Desk Concerts have started off hot in 2017 with BADBADNOTGOOD, Gallant and D.R.A.M. headlining the performances so far. Run the Jewels jump on the train with their own short concert, selecting a couple songs from Run the Jewels 3 — one of the best projects of yesteryear — to perform at the NPR offices.

Performing “Talk To Me,” “Legend Has It” and “Report To The Shareholders,” Killer Mike and El-P don’t really tone it down a notch for the intimate setting of the concert, because why would they?

“On an unseasonably beautiful day in D.C., Run the Jewels was sweaty and sulfuric, ad-libbing with one another in an exchange so slick, easy, and conspiratorial, it felt like we were in on their shared language,” NPR writer Mina Tavakoli described the scene.

“At some point in the future they’re going to try label us a political rap group, and that we are not,” Mike ended the performance. “We don’t care what party you belong to, we don’t care who you supported, we don’t care what you’re doing tomorrow politically. We care that socially, every one of you know that you were absolutely born free and nothing has the right to interrupt that freedom.”

Watch the performance below.