Killer Mike with Run the Jewels at Coachella 2015Fred von Lohmann

It doesn’t take long for someone to compare themselves to the shark from Jaws: “You’re gonna need a bigger boat, boys, you’re in trouble,” raps El-P, one half of hip hop duo Run the Jewels, on his first line on their new album. It’s a heavy gauntlet to throw down to the group’s competitors: up your game, or Run the Jewels will bite you in half.

Released three weeks early, RTJ3Run the Jewels

The first five songs on RTJ3 are all furious fighting talk, as Run the Jewels (El-P, joined by Atlanta legend Killer Mike) spend the album’s first 15 minutes relentlessly proclaiming their superiority to the rest of the rap scene. They imagine themselves playing Madison Square Garden, argue that they’re a better pairing than peanut butter and jelly, and, ahem, claim that their genitals are Michelin-starred. It’s all backed by fist-pumping shouts of the group’s initials, whether chanted by an appreciative crowd on ‘Call Ticketron’ or yelled by a frustrated Killer Mike on ‘Talk to Me’: “I told y’all on RTJ1, then I told ya again on RTJ2, and you still ain’t believe me. So here we go, RTJ3.”

It’s easy to laugh, not just at the frequent moments of intentional humour, but at the very idea of two 41-year-old men bigging themselves up to such an absurd degree. Engaging with the start of RTJ3 requires un-ironic listening; you give yourself up to it, and it carries you away in a whirlwind of testosterone and silliness, always staying on the right side of self-parody. The loudness of the instruments (the explosive opening to ‘Hey Kids’ is genuinely starling), combined with some fast flows and the sheer number of bars packed into each track, gives the opening an almost continuous energy. It’s very invigorating.

When the politics is missing, it’s extremely noticeable, failing to go beyond Kanye-ish (Kanyesque?) money-bragging, making caricatures out of Mike and EL-P

The members of Run the Jewels have always been political artists (see El-P’s 9/11 conspiracy theorising on ‘Run the Numbers’), but they smartly keep the influence of their views to a relative minimum during the opening salvo. YG-style Trump put-downs like “he wore a bad toupee and a spray tan” may be politically superficial, but they and other brief moments of social commentary contribute enormously to the first few songs on the album. References to the group’s hardline leftism keep them human (the humour helps with this, too), preventing their braggadocio from disconnecting them from their audience. When the politics is missing, it’s extremely noticeable – the track ‘Stay Gold’ falls flat because it fails to go beyond Kanye-ish (Kanyesque?) money-bragging, making caricatures out of Mike and EL-P.

‘Stay Gold’ marks the end of the sugar-rush opening of RTJ3 and the start of the album’s problems. The songs become slower and the lyrics more intensely political, with social issues moving to the centre as the influence of Killer Mike’s campaigning during last year’s US election becomes more apparent.  ‘Thieves!’, for example, is lyrically intelligent, making use of metaphor in a radical attempt to justify riots, but suffers from being humourless and musically a little drab. It’s more of a pulpy political essay than a banger, and a crashing comedown from the opening songs. Such tracks take themselves a little too seriously (a surprise, considering the group released a remix album last year which replaced their beats with cat noises), and the record’s mid-section sags as a result of sacrificing the frenetic feeling of earlier songs for more serious political commentary. Where ‘Close Your Eyes (And Count to Fuck)’ balanced these forces superbly on their previous album, songs like ‘Thieves!’ and ‘2100’ on RTJ3 sound sluggish because they are more interested in making a point than in being witty and entertaining.

Fortunately, the record’s closers pick up the pace. Kamasi Washington’s haunting horn solo on ‘Thursday in the Danger Room’ complements the brooding beats of the less memorable tracks ‘Oh Mama’ and ‘Everybody Stay Calm’ which precede it, before Rage Against the Machine frontman Zack de la Rocha delivers a bruising sermon to close the final track. You could criticise the group for relying on a rapper they’ve already worked with to conclude their record, but there’s no point. The verse is powerful, and a fitting summary of the revolutionary politics the duo promote throughout the album. Whatever your views, it gets you on your feet.

The performances from Mike and El-P are superb, with the latter in particular having a great knack for taking an obscure image such as Orson Wells’ War of the Worlds broadcast at the start of a verse and running with it for several lines, often with hilarious results. Although their politics can be a little heavy handed, the duo’s chemistry and ability to play off each other makes even the less interesting songs witty and energetic. And what’s truly great about Run the Jewels is hearing two elder statesman of the rap genre having the time of their lives, more than 15 years into their respective careers