Rage Against The Machine leader Zack De La Rocha has cemented his place within the Run The Jewels universe, as he landed features on the duo’s second album, their third, and their recently released fourth album, RTJ4. Now, a producer named DJ Skarface has imagined what it would be like if De La Rocha had a larger presence in RTJ’s discography with a new mashup project, Rage The Jewels.
The 13-minute effort, which features De La Rocha vocals from Rage Against The Machine songs on El-P’s Run The Jewels instrumentals, caught the attention of El-P himself: Sharing the project on Twitter, he wrote, “oh sh*t.”
oh shit https://t.co/xoeJUGJ7cQ
— el-p (@therealelp) June 16, 2020
The project features elements from across Rage Against The Machine and Run The Jewels’ discographies, as well as snippets of things like David Letterman introducing the band and El-P discussing how he came to work with De La Rocha. In addition to the single-track version of the project as presented on SoundCloud, DJ Skarface has also made a version with separated tracks available for free on Bandcamp via name-your-price download. Proceeds from the Bandcamp downloads will go to the National Lawyers Guild.
This follows a similar project DJ Skarface made a few years ago, in which the producer mashed up vocals from the first Run The Jewels album with DJ Shadow instrumentals. That project arrived months after the duo featured on DJ Shadow’s “Nobody Speak.”
Listen to Rage The Jewels above.