El-P Explains How He And Killer Mike Formed Run The Jewels

Aside from being partially responsible for one of the year’s finest albums so far (RTJ4), El-P is also a generous Twitter user. It’s far from uncommon to see him take time to answer questions his fans ask him, and his responses often contain interesting insight. For example, around the release of the new Run The Jewels album, he held an impromptu Q&A and shared some great trivia about the record. Now he has again offered some great info via Twitter, this time revealing how he and Killer Mike came to form Run The Jewels.

He began with a neat tidbit about the duo’s self-titled debut album, writing, “fun fact: the song run the jewels off the album run the jewels was the first run the jewels song ever made.” A fan then asked, “Was the song or group named first?” El-P responded, “the group name was first. true story: originally i was going to call my solo follow up to cancer for cure ‘run the jewels’.”

Another user asked, “How much of this did you guys seriously conceptualize from the start? Like was it gonna just be a couple songs and done, one full album?” El-P answered, “it was originally going to be an el-p project but mike came to hang and the rest is history. by the time we got to 6 jams we knew it had to be an album.”

In that same series of tweets, somebody asked, “what artist or group would you like to collab with next that you’ve never worked with before?” El-P responded by naming three big-timers: Missy Elliott, M.I.A., and Jay-Z.

Read our review of RTJ4 here.

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.