Back in 2018, at the height of Drake’s beef with Pusha T, Drake said that Pusha “crossed a line” with a lyric from his “The Story Of Adidon” diss track referencing Drake’s friend and producer Noah “40” Shebib. The line, which makes reference to 40’s Multiple Sclerosis, made Drake angry enough to record an apparently scathing diss track which he claimed he withheld on the advice of J. Prince. Ironically, Pusha has claimed that the real dagger of the song — the reveal of Drake’s son — came from 40 himself, a claim that 40 denies.

In a new profile in Rolling Stone, 40 revealed his own feelings on the line about him from Pusha’s diss track, saying he’d rather turn it into a positive than snipe back and forth with Pusha. “I guess all I’ll say is that was just a different thing for me,” he said. “Different than a bar that he gets off. No real comment. I made my comment. It was National MS Awareness day.”

“Ultimately, I like turning things into positive situations or brighter sides,” he continued. “And if that brings awareness to my disease on a bigger level, I was happy about that. That’s what I used it for. That ultimately is a good thing for me. I like that transaction we had from that perspective. I’m very vocal about it.” As to whether Pusha actually had “crossed a line,” 40 was straightforward. “Of course. That was something different than a bar in a song. That’s cool, I barely know that guy.”

Read the whole profile, which includes an in-depth discussion of the effects MS has had on 40, here.

UFC is moving forward with their “Fight Island” plans, with the location officially being Yas Island in Abu Dhabi, as was reported over the weekend and confirmed by Dana White on Tuesday.

The bigger news to come down on Tuesday, however, was a bout set for August that all parties involved, including fans, have been hoping to see for some time. Daniel Cormier and Stipe Miocic, the two best heavyweight fighters UFC’s seen in recent history, will meet for a long-awaited trilogy fight on August 15 as Cormier looks to avenge his loss to Miocic from last August.

Cormier teased the news on Monday, showing that he had virtually signed a contract.

Miocic won by fourth round TKO back in August at UFC 241, evening their head-to-head record at 1-1 after Cormier won their first bout with a first round knockout of Stipe at UFC 226. Since the loss, Cormier has been very open about wanting another crack at Miocic and told our Raj Prashad earlier this year he needs to “get that right” and avenge that loss or else he doesn’t “know how I’m going to live with myself.”

Now, a deal is done and Cormier will indeed get his shot at revenge, while Miocic can assert himself as the sport’s dominant heavyweight with a second win over the legendary DC.

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Music venues have been closed for months now as the coronavirus pandemic continues, and some parts of the music industry could be in big trouble. It was previously suggested that some concert promoters may find themselves out of business, and now it appears that owners of independent venues believe they could face the same fate.

The National Independent Venue Association (NIVA), whose 2,000 members come from every state, recently published a new survey (as Consequence Of Sound notes). In it, 90 percent of members believe “they will close permanently in a few months without federal funding.”

For this reason, NIVA is asking Congress to alter the Paycheck Protection Program so it better serves independent venues, so they can get money to cover six months’ worth of payroll, benefits, and other costs that still must be paid by these currently non-operational venues.

The survey also notes that opening at partial capacity isn’t a viable solution for independent venues, and they these concert spaces will not recover financially until the country is completely open again: “The ability to open at partial capacity is not economically feasible. Rents, utilities, payroll, taxes, insurance, and artist pay are not on a sliding scale matching the capacity we’re permitted to host. They are fixed costs. Due to the national routing of most tours, our industry will not recover until the entire country is open at 100% capacity. NIVA members need assistance in order to survive until that day.”

Read the full survey here.

As protests persist in all 50 states in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, many musicians have been outspoken about their support of the demonstrators. J. Cole is among several musicians, like Kanye West and even Ariana Grande, who showed up to stand alongside protesters in their home city. Now, J. Cole has given the green light to release a touching protest track from 2014 on streaming services.

Following the death of Michael Brown in 2014, J. Cole penned the track “Be Free.” The rapper shared the anthem on SoundCloud, but the track never saw a release on other streaming platforms. Now, amid a resurgence of Black Lives Matter protests, J. Cole has allowed his manager and Dreamville Records co-founder Ibrahim Hamad to share the song everywhere.

As Hamad explained on Twitter: “I’ve def seen a bunch of y’all tweets and got a bunch of texts asking for “Be Free” on streaming services.” Hamad got the go-ahead from J. Cole, so the track will likely appear on streaming services in the near future.

At the time of the song’s release, J. Cole added a heartfelt message alongside the track: “Rest in Peace to Michael Brown and to every young black man murdered in America, whether by the hands of white or black. I pray that one day the world will be filled with peace and rid of injustice. Only then will we all Be Free.”

In other J. Cole news, the rapper recently commended the Minneapolis mayor and city council members for voting to disband the Minneapolis Police Department following the murder of George Floyd. In just his third tweet of the year, J. Cole shared the news, writing: “Powerful powerful.”

Listen to “Be Free” on SoundCloud here.

When the mysterious RMR appeared earlier this year with a trap-country take on Rascal Flatts’ “God Bless The Broken Road,” he became an instant viral sensation. His look contrasted so thoroughly from his sound, he quickly captured the attention of rap fans looking for something new. However, he quickly proved that he was more than just a one-hit gimmick with “Dealer” featuring Future and Lil Baby and “I’m Not Over You,” which he debuted on Showtime’s Desus & Mero.

Now, it’s time for him to release his debut project, Drug Dealing Is A Lost Art, which was pushed back one week out of respect for protests against police brutality. The masked crooner shared a trailer for the album called “Controlled Narrative” on YouTube, posing a philosophical question for all his newfound fans: “Do you trust me?” The video concludes with the reveal for the new album release date, this Friday, June 12, as well as the star-studded, seven-song tracklist. Along with the aforementioned Future and Lil Baby remix of “Dealer,” the features also include Young Thug and Westside Gunn. Check out the trailer above.

Drug Dealing Is A Lost Art is due 6/12 on Warner Records.

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

For eight NBA teams, the offseason has officially begun now that the league and the NBPA have both agreed to a 22-team restart plan in Orlando. Among those teams are the Atlanta Hawks, who despite some preseason buzz that they could leap into the playoff conversation in the East this year, were unable to take a leap with a very young roster around first-time All-Star Trae Young this season.

On Tuesday, the Hawks held virtual exit meetings with general manager Travis Schlenk and head coach Lloyd Pierce, in which they discussed the season that was and looked ahead to the offseason transaction period that is still months away in October as well as next season. Schlenk talked about how the Hawks wouldn’t be beholden to drafting based off of positional need no matter where they land in the lottery, which raises eyebrows considering some of the top prospects share some overlap in skills and position with Young, but from a national perspective, the most interesting note was on what he expects the 2020-21 season to look like.

The NBA’s proposal called for an incredibly short offseason for Finals teams, with under a month between the Finals ending on October 12 and training camp beginning on November 10 so they can start the season on December 1. The NBPA was “surprised” by that timetable, and the expectation is that gets pushed back — a Christmas day start has long been an expected target date for the season to return and makes more sense for getting players rest. Whatever the case, as Schlenk told the media via video call Tuesday, he expects a very condensed schedule, with more back-to-backs and four game in five night stretches than we’ve seen recently as the league has worked hard to remove as many of those from the schedule as possible.

This, of course, raises concerns for playoff teams that will come off a shortened offseason and then be forced to play a condensed schedule in an effort to finish the season close to on time. The Tokyo Olympics looming in late summer may be one of the reasons for the league pushing to finish its season on time in order to allow for a full USA Basketball training camp and a roster of the best stars, but after such a strange finish to this season and aggressive scheduling next, it wouldn’t surprise many to see a number of players from teams that play deep into this upcoming postseason to withdraw their names from international competition.

Now, for a team like the Hawks looking to make a leap next year or, even more so, the Warriors getting Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson back healthy, this condensed schedule might just play into their hands. More back-to-backs will likely mean lots more strategic resting from those expecting another postseason run and might open up some regular season wins for teams coming off a nine-month layoff who may not need to rest guys as aggressively. All of this will have to be negotiated and it’s hard to see how a December start leads to an 82-game season — 70 seems far more realistic — but whatever the case, expect some rough stretches for your favorite team next year in terms of scheduling.

Earlier this year Judd Apatow was on Conan O’Brien’s podcast, sometime before the middle of March – I know this because I remember listening to it on the Q train and it’s been a considerable amount of time since I’ve been on the New York City subway – and when the subject of The King of Staten Island was brought up, he sounded fraught. Actually, that’s not entirely true, since O’Brien merely asked, “how are you,” (granted, a more and more difficult question to answer every day) before Apatow launched into an answer about how frustrated he was working on post-production of his new movie. I remember thinking to myself, while listening on the Q train, oh, that doesn’t sound good.

In retrospect, this makes a lot more sense. The King of Staten Island, which is getting great reviews, seems like a movie where everything has to be meticulous to work. (And it does work.) And when Apatow was talking to O’Brien, he was in the editing process and couldn’t quite get the opening scene right. It was Leslie Mann who suggested moving a scene of Pete Davidson’s Scott, obviously distraught, probably under the influence, driving along, not noticing the accident just up ahead. It’s a terrific opening scene and tells us everything we need to know about Scott. But, as Apatow says, he was being “bullheaded” and didn’t take this advice for months. It was only after he moved the scene that it all come together.

The King of Staten Island is loosely based on the life of Pete Davidson, who plays Scott, but with some major differences. As Apatow explains ahead, throwing 9/11 into this movie was just too much of a shared grief and would take away from Scott’s (and Davidson’s) personal grief. So Scott’s firefighter father dies in 2004, as Scott, now in his 20s, just kind of drifts aimlessly through life. But, as Apatow says, The King of Staten Island, at its heart, is a love story between Scott and Bill Burr’s Ray, the firefighter love interest of Scott’s mother (played by Marisa Tomei). It’s a deceptively sweet film that, as Apatow admits, still has at least one scene that makes him tear up every time.

Judd Apatow: How are you?

I keep catching myself saying “good,” but I wish I could just say “bad” and not have to offer an explanation. If you say “good” people don’t ask why.

Yeah, I know. It’s all new territory.

I’m sure it has to be weird for you right now doing press for a movie.

Yeah. It’s unprecedented times.

How are you holding up on the press tour? I’m assuming it’s a bit weird.

When our release date was canceled, I decided not to put any energy into worrying about when the movie would come out. There are more important things happening and I figured it would get figured out at some point. And then we decided that we would put it out on video on demand, which I was excited about because I thought this movie makes people happy. It’s also about first responders: firemen and nurses and trauma and grief, and it might help people process some of what’s going on around them. And I adjusted to the idea that we would have it come out on June 12th … and then the world changed again with everything that’s occurring right now. Obviously, it’s not important in the grand scheme of things, so I’m just doing my best to try to be positive during a really difficult time. I always feel like nothing will get better in the world, unless we all realize that we’re in this together. And whenever people try to separate people, it only leads to bad things. And it’s a Buddhist idea that we all need to get over the illusion of separateness.

It is a surprisingly emotional movie about firefighters.

Well, firefighters are very special people and we spent a lot of time with them over the last few years. The movie is a tribute to people who are willing to take those types of risks to help other people. And now with what’s happening with COVID, we see that there are people in many professions who put themselves in harm’s way to help others. That’s part of why I wanted the movie to come out, because it is a way of acknowledging that.

There’s a really poignant moment in the film when Bill Burr’s character goes into a burning building. I teared up during that.

I do every time. It’s easy to go through life and not fully pay attention to the people around you who have your back.

You were on Conan O’Brien’s podcast, maybe three months ago? I remember listening when I was on the subway, which feels like forever ago. And when you mentioned this movie you sounded fraught. You were fraught about something involved with editing the movie. Was this a particularly stressful edit?

Oh, I was having trouble figuring something out with the movie. I had the order of scenes and I couldn’t figure out how to fix it and I was getting very frustrated. So I went on Conan’s podcast and I just leaned into expressing to him what it feels like when things aren’t going well creatively. What was actually happening was there was a scene in the movie, which currently opens the movie, which I had 20 minutes into the movie. And for three months, my wife, Leslie, had been telling me that scene was in the wrong place and it should be the opening scene of the movie. And because I was so married to this progression we had thought of, I kept resisting her perfect note. And then when I finally tried it, it fixed the entire first half.

That opening scene is great.

Well, I was being bullheaded and saying, “You don’t understand what we’re doing here.” But I was completely wrong for months.

In the movie, Pete’s character’s father dies in 2004. I get this is loosely based on Pete’s life, but where is the line for you where that begins and ends? Why the differences at all?

Well, we were trying to come up with a story that would allow us to explore all the emotional terrain that Pete’s dealt with. And what we all came up with was the idea of his mom dating another fireman and how that would force him to confront everything which he hadn’t gotten over yet. We very quickly decided that 9/11 is too big a subject to fit into a movie like this. It’s a trauma that the entire world shares and we wanted this movie to be about his personal grief. But, at the same time, we were aware that when people watch the movie they will know, on some level, that it is about what Pete went through. So we came up with a fictional story that we hope is emotionally truthful. Nothing in the movie happened, but in a way it’s very honest.

Did you happen to see Bill Burr in The Mandalorian?

I didn’t, but I heard about it. I heard he was amazing in it.

I feel like he hit a new level with The Mandalorian, now every Star Wars fan knows him. That must be nice, considering he’s such a big part of your film.

I mean, I’ve seen him acting in Breaking Bad. He’s in the movie about Gary Hart. His voice work is incredible on the TV show that he makes, F is for Family. But I thought this movie was a great opportunity to show all sorts of different dimensions of Bill. People know him as this hilarious, opinionated guy. But he also has a big heart and a soft spot and a soft side. And in the role of Ray, we get to see all of that because the movie is, at its core, a love story between a young man and someone who might become his stepfather. I mean, it’s really fun to work with someone who’s had so much life experiences, so funny and talented, but hasn’t had a big lead part like this before.

He’s very good.

He had so much to offer and was a big part of the writing process with us. He helped create that character. So many of the great lines of the film, he came up with. And that’s how I like to work, a giant collaboration.

And I want to ask about one specific scene, because it’s a lot different than the rest of the movie. I don’t want to give too much away, but there’s a scene where Scott and his friends rob a drug store and there’s a shootout. Where did that come from?

I mean, the inspiration for it was the fact that Pete said there was a moment growing up in Staten Island where he felt like people were beginning to get in more trouble. And we wanted to show that this character was really lost and not having many options. There was the possibility that he might make some terrible choices and rob a pharmacy, thinking it would be really easy, but having it turn into a bit of a disaster. The person he robbed is Robert Smigel!

Oh yeah. I know. I was very happy when he showed up.

He was in This is 40 and was so funny.

I really liked Pete in Big Time Adolescence…

Oh, yeah! He’s fantastic in that movie.

I know you worked with him in Trainwreck for a little bit, but how was he as an actor? In terms of directing him. I know he doesn’t have a lot of experience, but he does seem pretty natural…

Yeah. I mean, he’s a real natural actor and he’s very present. We did a bunch of table reads and a lot of rehearsing with a ton of improvisation, so by the time we got to the set we had worked on the scenes a lot and felt good about what we were trying to do. But as an actor, Pete’s right there. It’s like the moment is happening. He’s not someone who has notes on his script saying, “talk louder here. Feel sadder here.” He just throws himself into it and lives the scene in a way that’s very exciting and sometimes hilarious to watch.

You can contact Mike Ryan directly on Twitter.

Run The Jewels recently released their new album, RTJ4, a couple days early. So, for charting purposes, the album’s debut week consisted only of listening data from last Wednesday and Thursday. In spite of that, RTJ4 is already the duo’s highest-charting album ever thanks to its No. 10 debut on the Billboard 200. Meanwhile, El-P is an active presence on Twitter, and after the news of RTJ4‘s chart placement was revealed, El found himself in what ended up being a sort of impromptu question-and-answer session: Last night, he spent a good chunk of time responding to tweets from fans asking questions about RTJ4.

One fan asked about a sample that El-P previously mentioned he was trying to clear so he could use it on the album, and he revealed that he wasn’t able to get permission to use the audio in question, whatever it was: “it wasn’t cleared so it didn’t make the album so you’ll never know.” Somebody else asked if that prevented the track from appearing on the album at all, and El-P revealed that he “remixed the whole song.”

Speaking of things that didn’t make the album, El noted, “we also have a version of walking in the snow where the last section has about 12 more bars of me and mike going back and forth.” A number of RTJ4 songs went through multiple phases, like “Ju$t” and “Out Of Sight.”

Check out some more inside info about RTJ4 from El-P below.

The RX is Uproxx Music’s stamp of approval for the best albums, songs, and music stories throughout the year. Inclusion in this category is the highest distinction we can bestow, and signals the most important music being released throughout the year. The RX is the music you need, right now.

On “Walking In The Snow,” the centerpiece moment from Run The Jewels’ fourth studio album, Killer Mike delivers a heart-wrenching verse in which he vividly recounts the NYPD killing of Eric Garner. It’s downright spooky how much it resonates in the wake of the more recent death of George Floyd at the hands of the Minneapolis Police Department — right down to the chilling refrain, “I can’t breathe.”

It’s tempting to say that RTJ4 is the most fitting document of our “current moment.” Welcome to the real world, where our current moment has been going on for over 100 years. Run The Jewels is not prescient or prophetic. They didn’t predict the uprisings currently sweeping the nation and the globe. They merely observe. When El-P points out on “JU$T,” “When your bases loaded / They’ll roll a grenade in the dugout,” he’s not hypothesizing. He’s talking about the burning of Black Wall Street, the destruction of the Black Panthers. When Mike wonders, “You believe corporations runnin’ marijuana?” it’s a loaded question. The subtext: Legal weed being corporatized at a terrifying pace after three decades of the “war on drugs” systematically undermined two generations of Black American communities, families, and opportunities.

Run The Jewels never predicted the future. They just spoke about what’s been going on all along. Where RTJ4 stands out is in its concision and clarity. Mike and El-P have always been blunt, slamming home their points over blustering beats provided by the maestro El-P and addressing the ills of modern society as often as they threaten to stomp out imposters. Here, though, there’s a new level of focus. They’re still plain-spoken and direct-to-the-point, but the hammer is accompanied now by a scalpel, cutting through to the heart of their truths and leaving the viscera on the table.

Over the phone, the two seers explained how their music remains as potent as ever, the ways their bond evolved over the years, what it means to be an ally, and what’s next for the revolution, which is indeed being televised.

‘Walking In The Snow’ punched me in the chest. It just took all my wind out. Mike says all you do is sit on your couch and Twitter rant. What happens after the Twitter rant?

El-P: I mean, you’re seeing it in the streets right now, right? You’re seeing it right now. Looking around f*cking Twitter, watching motherf*ckers tear sh*t apart, because at a certain point our generation is not f*cking having it. At a certain point, you react the way that the game has been set. If the game is set, you have nothing left to do but to get your voice heard and to say, ‘This is unacceptable.’ Then you tear sh*t down. That’s it.

Killer Mike: I would like to tell young people that all this has been done before, and there’s a level past this, of Bobby Seale saying, ‘You’re not outnumbered, you’re out organized.’ We burnt down Atlanta. They burned down in LA in ’92, they’ve rioted in the streets from New York to Miami before. This, what you’re doing, is natural. It is natural as a baby crying when it is popped. So do not be ashamed for what you’re doing, but there’s a level of organization after this.

I don’t have all those answers, but the people before you, whether it’s Eugene Debs or Stokely Carmichael, whether it’s Fannie Lou Hamer or Lucy Parkin, you can start to study that and study those techniques and see. What I can tell you first, though, is to look at the local [government]. That mayor should never be reelected, that chief should be exited with that mayor. Any city council, anybody who was not for those cops getting the death penalty. Then you have to decide you’re going to organize locally and change your local elections and your local laws. So that if a policeman does not at least have to engage in the one, two, three-isms that a soldier would have to do to engage, to kill someone, if you don’t change it so you have a community board with power to oversee police, and unions don’t have as much power, in terms of police unions being able to bully politicians, then we’re just going to keep burning sh*t every 20 years.

Jamie, you actually told Kweli on People’s Party that you can’t love Black music without loving Black people. What do you think it takes for Caucasian folks, folks of European descent? I don’t want to say “white” because I believe “white” is reserved for a very specific mindset. How do you step in and fill in the gap?

El-P: I will say that, first of all, I cannot speak for everybody. I don’t think I can speak for everybody because I didn’t have the exact same upbringing that everybody who looks like me had, in the sense that I was lucky enough to be born into a city that was multicultural, and I have always had a diverse group of friends. So it was, and it’s a little bit of a bubble, right? But what I can say is that I feel very strongly in this, and it’s the reason why I can confidently stand by my friend and make records in solidarity with him, and contribute to the conversation and not blink an eye, because I fully believe what I’m saying. And what I will say is this, it’s a few things that we touch on, on the record. One of which is a practical method.

The truth of the matter is, unless you take an offense against humanity personally, then you are not part of the human collective. The only way that any of this sh*t is ever going to change is if the people who are “allies,” friends, people who consider themselves empathetic, people who consider themselves good people, do more than simply just quietly empathize. We have to start taking an offense against our human brothers and sisters as an offense against us. It absolutely has to be as heartbreaking and as offensive to us as any other crime against another human. And it has to be all the time. It has to be that you feel it all the time, and that is the only functional way, in my mind, that things are going to change.

But let me present to you this thought. When they’re done, when they’re gone, when those people that are at the lowest of the totem pole of society, economically and culturally, the way that you have set it up, the way that it has been set up, when they’re done, who’s next? Because, and I say this on the record, funny thing about a cage, they’re never built for just one group. So when that cage is done with them and you’re still poor, it comes for you. Don’t f*cking forget that in your assistance of creating and enabling a police state, creating and enabling a cage, that cage is not disappearing the second that the people that you don’t care about are no longer there. You simply get to be the next group of people who suffer.

That’s capitalism. And that’s why when I watched the “Ooh La La” video, I actually cried a little bit because I didn’t know I wanted to see that so bad until you guys showed it to me. It was like, ‘Oh, hey, this is what happens after all these corrupt institutions are taken down.’

El-P: It was joyous. You know? I mean, I think we felt joy in doing it. You can see on the video, it was truly joyous. Everybody on that video was having the best f*cking day. We were all having the best day.

Killer Mike: I requested a jump rope, so it was a hell of a day for me.

El-P: I think that we reached for a metaphor that could communicate what we were trying to communicate, which is that freedom is something we don’t have yet. And until the constructs and the chains of our own caste system that we created are really gone — not that anyone’s won or lost, that simply humans have won — all of a sudden you wake up one day and there’s nothing there to delineate that anyone else is better or worse than anybody else. Wouldn’t that be fun? Wouldn’t that be a party?

Another thing that stood out to me is Pharrell speaking about “slave masters posing on your dollars,” which just feels like something different for him.

Killer Mike: Pharrell understood the perspective that Run the Jewels has and he added to it with that hook, because two things can exist or are existing simultaneously. I grew up in Atlanta, Georgia. I grew up with a Black political class. You have the cultural class. Black money. And that Black class figured out a way not to oppress, hurt, harm. Sometimes it’s debatable, arguable, but to work with the Black middle-working class and even the poor, to make sure that the city is one where a child who was raised by two grandparents gets to live his dream of being a rapper, but then gets to enter the business class to ownership and entrepreneurship.

So he’s not wrong for [coining] the “New Blacks” term. Or it’s not a contrast for this record. He came into the world of Run the Jewels and he added to help make it doper because he’s Pharrell. And he was dope, we was dope, and together it was dopest. I’m careful about that because we’re not Public Enemy. We love Public Enemy. We’re fans of Public Enemy.

El-P: We’re 100%, and I also think that with Pharrell, it’s like, look, there’s a reason why artists present themselves in multiple different ways or multiple different songs. And it’s because artists are more complex than one song. I’m going to be real with you. I thought that we were going to get some f*cking big commercial hook and sh*t, and this dude came back with the rawest hook of all time. And I was just like, ‘Yo, this sh*t is ill.’ And so I just want to appreciate him for that, because for us it felt like he really gave something to us.

Killer Mike: Shout out to our boy KP too, man. It’s always good to have a friend encouraging the homies, so KP really made sure, he’s a big fan of Run the Jewels. He used to be Outkast’s A&R, TLC’s A&R Usher. But he really wanted to see Run The Jewels and Pharrell do something. So I got to say, from that side, he was definitely an advocate in the ear.

Now, El, you’ve made the analogy of the four-album run before with EPMD, UGK, Outkast. What do you guys consider to be the biggest difference from the first Run The Jewels to Run the Jewels 4?

El-P: I mean, look, it’s not like you’re going to hear a Run the Jewels record and be like “Who are these guys?” It’s obviously us. It’s still me and my friend, trying to out rap each other and trying to make dope jams together. We’re trying to carve spaces out to keep ourselves excited about music and just to figure out new, fun ways to make dope classic rap jams.

At our core, we’re still inspired and we still feel fresh about the sh*t. When we get in a room together, it’s still electric. All other bullsh*t aside, when we’re together and we actually start seeing our vocals bounce off each other, and we start hearing that, we are always impressed with how it feels.

So in terms of what makes it different, we feel like this is a distillation of everything that we do and we really walked away from this feeling like we gave it our all and we stuck the landing. This is what the vibe was that we wanted to feel. And I don’t think there’s any radical departures, except we know going in how we want people to feel. We knew we wanted this to be raw and funky and joyous.

Killer Mike: It makes you want to do the Wop, too.

I know you have bigger expectations with this one, because it’s your first time on a real major platform. How do you handle the pressure of expectations and where is Run the Jewels next year?

El-P: On tour.

Killer Mike: We expect to be on tour and I think that our greatest expectations are to outdo ourselves. Our constant, constant, constant motivation is outdoing ourselves and not resting on our laurels. And that makes it easy to stay motivated to do dope sh*t, for us. Because I’m a fan of Run the Jewels. I’m in Run the Jewels and I like sitting around smoking, listening to dope ass rap music that gives me that wop and that bop and that feeling that I love rap music for. And that’s what RTJ 4 does.

We just stay in a constant evolution of trying to outdo ourselves. I saw OutKast do that when I was just an understudy who was lucky enough to hang around in the studio. I saw Big and Dre, every time, try to outdo the Big and Dre that was prior, two years before then. The secret to our newness or progressiveness, or whatever it’s described as, is simply that we’re running away from pausing in the accolades that we had the last record, and running toward whatever we have to do with this one.

RTJ4 is out now via Jewel Runners LLC. Get it here.