Run the Jewels, "Lie, Cheat, Steal"

Gurgling and gutter-trapped. That’s where Run the Jewels decides to begin our countrywide tour in “Lie, Cheat, Steal.” We burble into this song. Tempting to call the morass sleek. Tempting to confuse poison gas with perfume. A song that’s easy to slide into, yet sticks, an infestation, and binds you. But don’t worry if you’re overwhelmed, complicit in moral decay and societal apathy. You’re home, now, alone, tuning in. “Everybody’s doing it.”

There’s no outlook, no sunshine, when you’re drowning in sludge, and Run the Jewels is happy to lend a fist. They’re “revolutionaries,” obviously, and proud members of the “underpaid” and “underprivileged.” Hooded in black, our guides almost giddily escort us through the new digs - “a little shop of horrors that I can’t even afford the rent in.” Welcome home.

These are the honest heralds of modernity we don’t deserve. The path to ascension is clear: “Who the fuck gonna bully me if I got a billi?” They’re not for sale, of course - but they’re “taking payment.” And the hope, the aspiration we’ve chosen and share, is a dream of application and abandonment. You’ve made it, “prisoner of privilege.” You’ll lock up, won’t you?

Clawing won’t do us any good. Not here. Who will we appeal to when our playpen has been covered in “mace”? Who comforts us when our oldest, most sinful institutions are “shaked and rattled”? “Little black spot” though they might be, Run the Jewels are an unignorable blot. An illumination’s reckoning.

Yes, Run the Jewels sprays muck, covering subtlety; their slop splatters lines, crusting the earned optimism of time and progress. They, though, are wading along. They’ve traded idealism for an “AK.” A suggestion, I think.

This, a filthy boot stamp of a song with sparkling laces, is as good a summary as one could hope for, in the year of our lying, cheating, and stealing, _ _ _ _. Just insert 4 numbers. Everybody’s been doing it.