04. El-P And Killer Mike Perform Together As Run The Jewels

Without a doubt, the entire weekend was pregnant with anticipation for Sunday night’s closing set from R. Kelly, performing hits in his hometown, but El-P and Killer Mike were the secret kings of the weekend. Their afternoon sets, mere hours before Kells made it rain on Union Park, waffled from being a church-like, love-filled experience — Killer Mike talking to the crowd about spirituality, protecting one another, and how he and his wife attend Sunday service but also go to strip clubs together — to El-P’s solo snarls into a vicious shared set of songs from the duo’s collaborative album Run The Jewels. After El performed “The Full Retard,” he ducked backstage so he and Mike could walk out together to George Thorogood’s “Bad To The Bone.” The chemistry evident on the album, as well as on Mike’s R.A.P. Music, is just as potent on stage, but it wasn’t just their stage show that made them marquee members of the festival line-up. The duo also had their own beer, brewed by Chicago’s Goose Island, on tap.