Category: Worldwide

We write about bourbon so often that it’s hard to keep in mind that late fall and winter are much more “bourbon season” than spring or summer. Those sweet corn, rich vanilla, baking spice, and charred oak flavors neat, on the rocks, or mixed into cocktails make a hell of a lot of sense with the holidays coming on. It’s also getting chilly and the famed “Kentucky hug” — the warming finish so common with good bourbons — is a welcome houseguest.

We’re never shy about shouting out affordable bottles of bourbon. It’s a category where you can get a hell of a lot of quality for around $30. At $50, you get into some quality sippers. But if you’re willing, able, and interested enough to splurge, you can have a truly distinct experience.

Today, we’re looking at bourbons in the $100-300 range. Yes, we know that’s a lot. But we also know there are also far more frivolous things that people spend far more money on. Obviously, we recognize these bottles aren’t going to be an everyday purchase for most folks, but if you decide to drop the coin these picks will help amplify your next special occasion in a big way. We all deserve those sorts of treats from time to time.

Check out our picks for eight expensive bourbons that are worth the price tag, below. Note that many of them started in the $50-80 range and the prices were driven up by the aftermarket — so part of what you’re paying for is the ability to say, “I tasted that!”

Old Fitzgerald Bottled in Bond 9-Year

ABV: 50%

The Story:

If you’re a fan of whiskey, there’s a pretty good chance you like to make the most out of your money by drinking a high proof whiskey. Old Fitzgerald Bottled in Bond is 100 proof and even comes in a decanter bottle that’s inspired by the original 1950’s diamond decanter.

Tasting Notes:

The first nosing brings forth hints of charred oak, subtle cinnamon, and brown sugar. The first sip carries those notes forward along with mellow wheat and rich, sweet corn flavors. The finish is long, warming, and ends with a pleasing hint of cinnamon.

Bottom Line:

A whiskey this balanced and flavorful is most suited for slow sipping over a single ice cube.

Price: $299.99

Weller Antique 107

ABV: 53.5%

The Story:

Weller is known for its high wheat bourbons. Named after William Larue Weller, the addition of a large amount of wheat makes all of Weller’s whiskeys (including Antique 107) mellow, sweet, smooth, and… soft on the palate. That’s a recipe for easy sipping.

This offering is bottled at 107 proof, but you wouldn’t know it as it carries none of the harsh, alcohol heat you’d expect from such a high proof whiskey. Antique 107 is full of flavor, sublimely mellow, and well-balanced.

Tasting Notes:

After a nosing, you’ll be met with spicy cinnamon, toasted oak, and sweet cream. The first sip draws out hints of dried fruits, charred oak, and brown sugar. The finish is long, warming, and filled with a nice combination of cinnamon, oak, and caramel.

Bottom Line:

Weller Antique 107 works well in a cocktail due to its high alcohol content, but (for that price) deserves to be enjoyed neat or on the rocks.

Price: $129.99

Elmer T. Lee Single Barrel

ABV: 45%

The Story:

Elmer T. Lee was a master distiller at Buffalo Trace. He’s most well-known for launching Blanton’s, back in the early ’80s. This bourbon was made to honor the iconic figure. It’s made from hand-selected barrels, is well-balanced, and has won some huge awards — which is what turned this bottle from $50 value pick to $300 splurge.

Tasting Notes:

Nosing brings scents of spice, clover honey, leather, and vanilla. The first delivers sweet cream, Christmas baking spices, toasted oak, bright orange, and rich caramel. That oak, orange, and leather is present on the dry finish, too.

Bottom Line:

Pay tribute to Elmer T. Lee by drinking his bourbon surrounded by friends, neat or on the rocks.

Price: $299.99

Michter’s 10 Year

ABV: 47.2%

The Story:

Over the past decade, Michter’s has made a name for itself in the whiskey world. This award-winning, highly lauded bourbon is aged for ten years in fire-charred American oak casks. The result is 94.4 proof bourbon that’s won countless awards for quality and continues to get rave reviews today.

Tasting Notes:

Aromas of toffee, brown sugar, and cloves fill your nostrils on the nosing. The first sip delivers cinnamon-sugar, maple syrup, creamy caramel, and rich vanilla. The finish is medium in length, pleasingly warm, and ends with a nice hint of velvety, slightly smoky, caramelized sugar.

Bottom Line:

Michter’s 10 should be enjoyed on the rocks and savored slowly — to let it open up throughout the experience.

Price: $129.99

Old Bones Reserve Bourbon

ABV: 55%

The Story:

If you’ve never heard of Old Bones, you’re missing out. Distilled by the well-known MGP distillery in Lawrenceburg, Indiana before being bottled in Bardstown, Kentucky, this high-rye bourbon is made using a mash bill of 55% corn, 40% rye, and 5% barley before being aged for ten years in new, charred oak barrels.

Tasting Notes:

This whiskey deserves a good nosing before taking a sip. Expect to be met with hints of smoked wood, dried fruits, and winter baking spices. The first sip is filled with subtle pepper, sweet caramel, and brown sugar. The finish is long, intensely warm, and ends with a final kick of spice.

Bottom Line

A smooth sipping whiskey, Old Bones Reserve is well-suited as a chilly fall evening warmer.

Price: $119

Widow Jane ‘The Vaults’

ABV: 49.5%

The Story:

If you can find a bottle of ‘The Vaults’ you’re in for a truly unique flavor experience. This is a blend of bourbons in which the youngest is 14 years. The barrels used to age this whiskey were air seasoned in the elements for 8 years before the bourbon was added to it.

Tasting Notes:

You’ll be pleased that you nosed this bourbon before drinking it. The aromas is of the barrelhouse itself. It’s sweet, dusty, and warm — with hints of vanilla, dried cherries, and cinnamon. The first sip brings strong mint, charred oak, sweet cream, dark chocolate, and sweet vanilla flavors. The finish is medium-length, warm, and ends with a final kiss of sweet toffee.

Bottom Line:

If you pay for a bottle of this truly special whiskey, you’re going to want to save it for a special occasion and sip it with friends and family.

Price: $199

Booker’s

ABV: 65.3%

The Story:

Booker’s isn’t crazy expensive. But it’s also not cheap. This unfiltered and uncut bourbon that’s part of Jim Beam’s Small Batch Collection can easily be found in the $100 range. It’s well worth the price — with its surprisingly smooth, very warming aspects.

Tasting Notes:

You might assume that whiskey with such a high proof would be harsh, but this one isn’t. The first aromas are those of charred oak, dried fruits, and cooking spices. The first sip yields sweet vanilla, cocoa, leather, and brown sugar flavors. It’s that vanilla that powers the mellow finish, with wisps of honey, to boot.

Bottom Line:

In this list of expensive bourbons, Booker’s is a true bargain at around $100 ($70 if you’re rally lucky). Buy a bottle or two and sip it to warm up as the fall nights grow ever colder. This one might even be affordable enough to mix a strong cocktail with.

Price: $100

Jefferson’s Ocean Aged Cask Strength

ABV: 56%

The Story:

When Jefferson’s Ocean Aged Bourbon first showed up on the market, the whole “aging barrels at sea”-thing seemed like a gimmick. Well, I’m here to say, “there’s something to it.” Especially at cask strength. Even without the fact that this whiskey was fully matured and then loaded on a ship to sail around the world, crossing the equator four times, and stopping on five different continents, it’s just a well-rounded whiskey.

Tasting Notes:

The first aromas you’ll notice are those of caramelized sugar, subtle spice, and ocean brine. The first sip delivers hints of salted caramel, sweet cream, toasted wood, brown sugar, and subtle toffee. The finish is long, warming, and ends with a pleasing hit of sea brine mingling with caramel.

Bottom Line:

It’s well suited for sipping neat or on the rocks while you overlook a large body of water… or even a backyard pond.

Price: $109.99

The New Orleans Saints went to Tampa Bay on Sunday night to face off with the division rival Bucs in what most expected to be a very competitive game between two of the all-time great quarterbacks in Tom Brady and Drew Brees. Instead, we were treated to one of the most one-sided games of the season, as Brees and company dominated from the opening kick en route to a 38-3 drubbing to take the lead in the NFC South.

Brees was terrific, going 26-of-32 for 222 yards and four touchdowns, picking apart the Bucs secondary with short and intermediate throws with nearly no resistance. Brady, however, had a disastrous night as he tossed three interceptions, going 22-of-38 through the air for 209 yards and no touchdowns. Late in the game, Tampa’s former starter, Jameis Winston, entered the game for the Saints final drive as Brees’ new backup got the chance to put the game on ice with one last drive and knees.

After the game, while Brees did his postgame interview with Michele Tafoya, Winston celebrated his new team’s win over his old team by breaking out his infamous “eat a W” move that he first broke out prior to a loss in New Orleans while with the Bucs.

It’s a pretty hilarious move by Winston, who was clearly thrilled to pick up such a dominant win over his former squad, as he turned the thing he’s been mocked for for years into a trolling celebration.

This week’s sixth episode of The Walking Dead: The World Beyond was marginally better than the last few episodes, but the series is still struggling, except as a very slow way to fill us in on the CRM and the whereabouts of Rick Grimes.

The main series, however, did add two new characters this week, Percy (Ted Sutherland) and Tony, played by Scott Adsit, who should be familiar to many of you from 30 Rock. He’s a great addition; unfortunately, I suspect he will not live long. Percy and Tony, as it turns out, are post-apocalyptic grifters. Percy cons Hope and Iris’ group into believing that two men stole his truck. Working vehicles are apparently in short supply a decade into the apocalypse.

Hope and Iris rally around Percy, and they plan a heist to retrieve the truck. However, when they find it, the passenger is dead, but there are no keys to be found. Iris (stupidly) follows Percy into a building to retrieve the keys, which is where Percy hoodwinks Iris into believing that he’s been shot by the third man. In the past, when Percy played this con on others, they ran away when they heard the gunshot, and Percy and his partner, Tony, absconded with all of their stuff. Iris, however, turns back to help Percy, which is when she spots him running away with their stuff with Tony driving the truck. Tony was only pretending to be dead. He was in on the scam the whole time.

In her efforts to retrieve their stuff back from Percy, Iris falls into a dumpster filled with zombies. When the lives of herself and those of her friends are endangered, however, Percy and Tony return and help them out. Percy reasons that, because Iris is the first person they ever conned who actually came back to help him, he owes it to Iris to help them out. They all become friends and bond over a shadow puppet show together.

For purposes of the slowly moving storyline, Percy and Tony also agree to drive the sixsome to their destination, so I suspect Hope, Iris, and the gang will make it to CRM in New York by the season finale and set up a season two that will be more CRM-focused. In the more immediate future, Tony asks Felix if the CRM symbol on his jacket will get them out of a jam when they try to steal gas from CRM to operate the truck. That is what’s in store next week.

In the meantime, there was another post-credits sequence, as The World Beyond starts to fill in some gaps. Recall that, two weeks ago, we learned that CRM is experimenting on people in order to find a cure. It’s just as sociopathic as when Troy was doing it on Fear the Walking Dead, but the doctors and lab coats give it the illusion of respectability here.

As we learned two weeks ago, they’re experimenting on “A’s”, and this week, we see Dr. Lyla Bellshaw continue to work on these experiments. From a photo on her desk, it also appears that she may be dating Leopold Bennett, the father of Hope and Iris.

However, we also learn that CRM is expecting the arrival of Hope and Iris — in fact, Elizabeth appeared to orchestrate their escape from Campus Colony before CRM slaughtered everyone, so Dr. Bellshaw is anticipating Hope and Iris’s arrival. Before they arrive, however, Dr. Bellshaw has to arrange something with Dr. Bennett. She either has to kill him in advance or inform him that Hope and Iris are going to become part of their experiments.

What’s unclear is why Elizabeth wanted Hope and Iris to travel across the country instead of just bringing them to CRM, but I suspect it’s because she’s testing them. Are they A’s (and will therefore be experimented on)? Or are they Bs (like Rick Grimes) and will thus become useful to the CRM community? I suspect that Dr. Bennett doesn’t want them to have anything to do with the CRM, which is why I think Elizabeth also sent them the messages they believed were from their father in the opening episode in order to manipulate them into traveling across the country.

This storyline is developing slowly, but it’s easily the best thing going for The World Beyond right now.

Two weeks ago, Sherry and Dwight reunited on Fear the Walking Dead for the first time since season 7 of The Walking Dead, giving us a reunion years in the making. It is maybe no surprise then that, in this week’s episode, the past would catch up with them.

The last time Sherry and Dwight saw each other, recall, is when Sherry escaped Negan, who was essentially her abusive captor. Negan tortured Sherry, and would sometimes pit Sherry and Dwight against each other. Dwight transformed into a different person when he was a henchman for Negan, someone Sherry could barely recognize. Dwight, however, has spent that last several years reforming himself so that, when he finds Sherry again, he can return to her as the man with whom she fell in love.

What no one considered — and I applaud Ian Goldberg and Andrew Chambliss for this — is that Sherry would change while she was away. Of course, she would, and she is still scarred by her own history with Negan. So while Sherry and Dwight get to enjoy a brief honeymoon, it doesn’t take long before they’re brought back down to Earth. As it turns out, Sherry belongs to a rebel group of mask-wearing people who have escaped Virginia. One of those men is Rollie, a man that kidnapped Dwight last season, but when Dwight turned the tables on Rollie and had him dead to rights, he let him go. Rollie remembers that kindness (and it may have saved Dwight’s life).

Rollie and Sherry have been working together with the rebel faction to kill Virginia because Sherry has put all of her resentment and hatred of Negan onto Virginia, and it has warped her personality, too. She and Rollie are determined to steal back Althea’s MRAP from Ginny, and with Dwight’s help, they manage to do so. At this point, Morgan also joins the group, and he insists that Sherry not kill Ginny because an attempt to do so would endanger all the people they still have under Ginny’s control, including Grace, with whom Morgan is determined to reunite.

Sherry and Rollie not only reject Morgan’s plea, but lock Althea and Morgan away so that they can’t interfere with the plan to kill Ginny. Dwight, meanwhile, attempts to lure Ginny out so that Sherry can use the MRAP to kill her, which Dwight doesn’t particularly appreciate, either. He doesn’t like who Sherry has become. Sherry senses as much, and once Dwight makes the call to have Ginny meet him, she locks her own husband up so that he can’t stop her, either.

In the end, however, Ginny doesn’t make an appearance, and Dwight escapes in time to convince Sherry not to use the MRAP to kill a boatload of rangers. She listens, begrudgingly and tearfully, but after the rangers leave, Sherry and her faction decide to split off from Dwight and Co. again, because Sherry is determined to kill Ginny. She has become what Dwight once was: Driven by her animosities.

Negan did a number on Sherry, and the way he treated her still lingers, just as it lingered for so long within Dwight. Last time, Sherry left Dwight because he’d changed. This time, Sherry leaves Dwight because she has changed. All Dwight can do is hope that she finds herself and comes back to him again.

Meanwhile, Dwight followed through on the plan to fake his and Althea’s deaths so that Ginny doesn’t continue following them. Meanwhile, they join forces with Morgan and go back, grab the folks they met in the office building with the bubonic plague, and embark on a journey to the community behind the dam that Morgan hopes to build. Dwight, however, leaves behind an infinity symbol and a marker for Sherry so that she will know where to find him when she’s ready.

Additional Notes

— There were a few clever and very self-aware lines in the episode. Calling back to The Walking Dead, Sherry made fun of Morgan for his “every life is precious” bullsh*t. Morgan also referred to the “too-long” All-Out War on The Walking Dead, which actually only lasted a few weeks in real-time. It was “too long” because it lasted two and a half seasons on the show, which is to say: I think that was a little dig at the parent show.

— The writing on this show continues to be so much better than it has been the last couple of seasons, while a lot of the characteristics of the bad Fear writing are now showing up on The World Beyond. Scott Gimple seemed to be very focused on Fear in the fourth and fifth seasons before turning his focus over to The World Beyond. That’s all I’m saying.

— There were a couple of moments that seemed to call back to The Walking Dead. Using music to torture someone is exactly what Negan and Dwight did to Daryl on The Walking Dead. Meanwhile, Dwight’s decision to let the dog go at the end of the episode echoed Sherry’s decision to let Darryl go on The Walking Dead. Someone (specifically writer Ashley Cardiff) did their homework.

The L.A. Chargers have an incredible knack for playing in one-score games that come down to the wire, and, unfortunately for them, a propensity for losing those games in gut-wrenching fashion. Last week, it was seeing a fourth quarter lead evaporate to the Denver Broncos of all teams, as Drew Lock marched Denver to a touchdown on the final play of the game to beat L.A. by one point.

This Sunday, it was the Chargers turn to have a shot at a game-winning touchdown in the final seconds, with Justin Herbert orchestrating a drive down the field that put L.A. on the one yard line with six seconds to play and no timeouts. The first play they ran was a fade route to Mike Williams, who nearly hauled in a great pass from Herbert but had it broken up as he slammed to the ground, hitting his head and getting knocked out of the game.

The next play was another fade, this time to third-string tight end Donald Parham Jr. The play was initially called a touchdown, but review showed the ball clearly bounce off the turf as he went to the ground for an incomplete pass to give the Raiders the win and move the Chargers to 2-6 on the season.

The Chargers have now lost six games by a combined 24 points, which is rather incredible as this team just cannot find a way to get over the hump in the fourth quarter, whether on offense or on defense. They’ll be back at it again against the Dolphins next Sunday to see if they can find a new way to lose in crushing fashion, or if Justin Herbert can pick up his second win of his young career.

A Donald Trump loss means many things to a lot of people. For his entire administration, to name one group, it means they will soon be unemployed. But here’s another person who’s about to be out of a gig: Alec Baldwin, SNL’s resident Agent Orange. Since 2016, the acclaimed actor has played the unlikely commander-in-chief, regularly gracing the show with his smushy-faced impersonation. It even nabbed him an Emmy! But when he learned Trump had finally been fired by the American people, he was not, as the president would put it, sad.

“I don’t believe I’ve ever been this overjoyed to lose a job before!” Baldwin tweeted. He then added, “It will be comforting when we have a President who doesn’t Tweet twice as much as I do … They’re gonna need an enormous shipment of tissues sent to Mar-a-Lago … On to my next wish. That everyone who voted in this election maintains that commitment and votes in the 2022 midterm elections. Let’s keep this going!!!”

Mind you, Trump’s still around for the next 2 ½ months, and there’s no sign that he’s going to go quietly. Even after he’s been out, which could be by force, he’s bound to make waves, prompting lots of cold open fodder. But perhaps Baldwin sees the Biden win as a good exit strategy. After all, no one wants to do the same gig forever, and it has to hurt — physically and mentally — to play someone so exhaustingly nefarious.

(Via EW)

Star Wars was on a lot of people’s minds on Saturday when the presidential race was called for Joe Biden, who had handily defeated his rival, incumbent Donald J. Trump. Celebrations erupted across the nation’s cities, videos of which were compared to the ending of Return of the Jedi, which concludes with an evil Empire defeated by tireless (and often outnumbered) revolutionaries. As noticed by The Hollywood Reporter, There was another person who saw a more broader comparison to the series: Luke Skywalker himself, Mark Hamill.

Hamill shared an image — which had appeared elsewhere before — that reworks the posters to the original trilogy so that it tells the story of the last three presidents. In the first, Barack Obama’s face is presented with the words “A New Hope.” (We’ll ignore, this time, the fact that that film is still technically called simply Star Wars.) In the second, Trump’s face is affixed to The Empire Strikes Back. Finally we get to Return of the Jedi, with Joe Biden leading the successful comeback.

The actor has long been an outspoken Trump critic, recording mocking videos and narrating a PSA from the Republican turncoat organization The Lincoln Project, where he reminded people that Trump’s demonizing of absentee ballots means he was also spitting in the face of overseas soldiers, who also vote by mail. And of course, there’s his habit of reading Trump’s deranged tweets in his beloved Joker voice.

(Via THR)

For the third consecutive year, Ariana Grande has released a new album. Positions arrived following months of anticipation and it boasted appearances from The Weeknd, Ty Dolla Sign, and Doja Cat. A little over a week after its release, Positions is now the fifth No. 1 album of Grande’s career.

In its first week the new record sold 174,000 equivalent album units, 129,000 of those streaming equivalent units, 42,000 album sales. Positions is also her third consecutive release to debut atop the albums chart, a feat she pulled off in just two years and three months, making her the fastest scorer of No. 1 albums by a woman in Billboard history. The other two albums in this achievement are 2018’s Sweetner and 2019’s Thank U, Next.

For the record, Miley Cyrus and Donna Summer both landed No. 1 albums in a shorter time period than Grande, but their releases were not all proper studio albums. Miley delivered two soundtracks and an album during her streak from July 2007 and May 2009, while Donna did it with a live album, a studio project, and a Greatest Hits release from November 1978 and January 1980.

You can revisit our review of Positions here.

(via Billboard)

Ty Dolla Sign is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

When the majority of media outlets called the presidential election for Joe Biden, the news was almost dwarfed by people making fun of Donald Trump. Early Saturday, the soon-to-be former commander-in-chief — who’d spent the days since Tuesday’s election spreading baseless conspiracy theories about voter fraud — announced a last-minute press conference, to be held at the Four Seasons in Philadelphia. He then corrected himself: He didn’t mean the upscale hotel. He meant…a landscaping company. And it wasn’t in scenic Center City; it was in the metropolis’ northeast, beside a sex shop and a crematorium.

It was a fitting farewell to a presidency that was by turns disastrous, nightmarish, and just plain weird, filled with surreal incidents such as him “declaring” victory over states he hadn’t won over Twitter. As celebrations filled the streets of the nation’s cities, people took the time to mock what appeared to be a gaffe. Some speculated that a staffer had accidentally booked the wrong place, expecting to get one of the city’s tonier hotels and instead getting a random parking lot, far from the action. But the real story about why they wound up at the Four Seasons Total Landscaping, as reported by The New York Times, is much more mundane:

In reality, the mistake was not in the booking, but in a garbled game of telephone. Mr. Giuliani and the Trump campaign adviser Corey Lewandowski told the president on Saturday morning their intended location for the news conference and he misunderstood, assuming it was an upscale hotel, according to multiple people familiar with the matter.

Of course, why single out a random landscaping company, especially one with such a familiar name? That, so far, has not been explained. But the idea, The Times reports, was always to keep Trump — or at least his cronies, chief among them personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, as POTUS himself was, of course, busy playing golf — away from Biden-friendly downtown Philadelphia. Instead, they sought a “friendlier part of town.” And that’s why the president’s bumbling attorney wound up babbling conspiracy theories in a parking lot in a far-flung section of the nation’s birthplace.

The presser wound up starting right after news of the Biden win broke. In fact, it was scheduled for 11:30am and CNN first called the race for Biden at around 11:25. Though a handful of locals with “Trump-Pence” signs showed up, as per The Philadelphia Inquirer, they were soon drowned out by the honking horns of jubilant Biden-Harris supporters.

The Inquirer also reports that, by the next day, the small business had already achieved mythic, or at least comic, status, with people flocking to its barbed-wire gates to take selfies. The staff of Four Seasons Total Landscaping, though, remained “perplexed” by their moment of social media infamy:

Kevin Moran, a foreman at the firm, simply shrugged when approached while opening the gate to the parking lot on Sunday. He said his boss got the call from Trump campaign staffers Saturday morning and thought they must have found the business on Google and been interested because it was a “secure location” set off from the street by a security fence.

Still, while the neighborhood, Mayfair, had achieved national attention for maybe the first time in recorded history, the Inquirer reports that it did not lead to a spike in business. In fact, the influx of people, from Trump staffers to reporters to gawking chuckleheads grabbing Instagram pics, did little more than take up parking spots, frustrating locals.

One person not amused was the 78-year-old employee working the counter of the Fantasy Island sex shop next to the (other) Four Seasons. He said the phone had been ringing off the hook with people calling to ask, “Is Rudy Giuliani there?”

So who can he blame? Giuliani and Corey Lewandowski for not clarifying to Trump which Philadelphia Four Seasons they would be visiting. But the fault still mostly falls on Trump, who, given his finances, should probably get used to not always assuming he’ll be patronizing upscale hotels.

(Via The New York Times and The Philadelphia Inquirer)

The entertainment world was hit with shocking news on Sunday when it was announced that longtime Jeopardy! host Alex Trebek died at the age of 80 after a battle with pancreatic cancer. As expected, Trebek’s biggest supporters took to social media to share their favorite memories. Among them was Run The Jewels’ El-P, who jumped on Twitter to share an idea involving Trebek that he and Killer Mike had hoped to make a reality on the rap duo’s recently released album Run The Jewels 4.

“True story: when we were originally crafting ‘a few words for the firing squad’ off RTJ4 we were going to make it a sequel to ‘jeopardy’ from RTJ2 and call it ‘final jeopardy,’” El-P wrote. “We reached out to alex trebeks people and tried to get him on the jam but couldn’t make it happen.” The rapper explained why the duo felt that the Jeopardy! host’s involvement would be a great fit on the album. “We thought of that because run the jewels was an answer on jeopardy which we sampled and had in between verses but it didn’t quite work so we tried to get Alex to re-do it a little differently,” El-P said. “When we couldn’t get him we scrapped the idea and created ‘a few words…’ instead.”

Run The Jewels’ “A Few Words For The Firing Squad (Radiation)” is a strong outro from Run The Jewels 4, and it was also crowned Uproxx’s mid-year song of 2020 so far back in June. El-P also shared what Trebek meant to him personally, saying he “represented a calm joy of knowledge and it’s pursuit.” He added, “He had a gentlemanly demeanor and seemingly kind soul and used intelligence playfully and encouragingly. sad to see him go and hope he rests peacefully.”