Album Of The Week: Run The Jewels RTJ2

I don't know how this is even possible, but Run The Jewels are getting better. They were already a mean motherfucking machine last year, when Killer Mike and El-P got together for their self-titled RTJ debut. These two guys, with vastly different backgrounds but similar mentalities and complementary visions, had somehow found each other. They'd figured out that what the world needed was a hard, merciless, frill-free 40-minute shit-talking monster of an album, and they delivered it. Mike and El had no greater purpose on that first album. They just wanted to let you know, in exquisite detail, how happy they would be to slap your face off your skull. Now, a year and a half later, they're back again, still cracking bones with their teeth. And they've expanded things, talking about a few things beyond the whole I'm-the-shit thing, while still letting you know, on no uncertain terms, that they are the shit. RTJ2 is as hard and blunt and all-crushing as their debut, but it's bigger and deeper and prettier. They're a meaner motherfucking machine now, and there's a very good chance that RTJ2 is the best album anyone will release in 2014, in any genre. (As with the first album, RTJ2 is a free download, which would normally put it into Mixtape Of The Week contention. But you can buy it, if you want, which complicates things. And anyway, these guys are calling it an album, and I don't want these guys mad at me.)