Run The Jewels – “A Few Words For The Firing Squad (Radiation)”
Timothy Saccenti
This weekend, Run The Jewels will release RTJ4, their hotly anticipated fourth album. The lead-up to the album release has been chaotic. RTJ have been forced to postpone their planned tour with Rage Against The Machine and cancel all the high-profile festival sets that they were going to do. And that was before the events of the past week, when police violence erupted all across America. As part of a press conference with Atlanta mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms this past weekend, RTJ member Killer Mike made an impassioned speech to protesters. And El-P has taken to Instagram to share the dark and stormy new song “A Few Words For The Firing Squad (Radiation).”
Yesterday, El-P posted a video shot in his home studio. In the clip, we hear the entirety of “A. Few Words For The Firing Squad,” the last song on RTJ4. (They’ve previously shared “The Yankee And The Brave (ep. 4)” and “Ooh LA LA.”) The sound quality isn’t perfect, but it’s enough to convey the churning intensity of the song, which features pounding martial strings and a mournful saxophone.
El-P: “When they got you you feeling like a fox running from another pack a dogs/ Put the pistol and the fist up in the air, we are there, swear to God.” Killer Mike: “This is for the do-gooders that the no-gooders, used and then abused/ For the truth tellers tied to the whipping post, left beaten, battered, bruised/ For the ones whose body hung from a tree like a piece of strange fruit/ Go hard, last words to the firing squad was, ‘Fuck you too.'” Listen below.
RTJ4 is out 6/5. On Instagram yesterday, El-P confirmed that the album, like the other three Run The Jewels albums, would be available as a free download.
