CASTLES II

"DJ-Kicks is the most important DJ mix series ever." It was Mixmag, the English reference magazine for electronic music that wrote it. It's hard to deny it: since 1995, the German label !K7 has been making flawless albums with more than 60 volumes by entrusting its mixes to leading artists. Pioneer of the genre at a time when this art form was not widely known, the label succeeded in introducing the mix outside of the clubs while popularising electronic music with the general public.

Daniel Dumile, alias MF DOOM, lived a thousand lives and his career was a succession of false starts and bright flashes. Before passing away on the 31st of October, 2020, Dumile had been a young virtuoso rapper welcomed with open arms by the music industry, then an outcast that sneaked back onto the scene through the back door after years of wandering (now masked), the 'go-to-guy' of independent rap during the 2000s and then some kind of Indie messiah as dubbed by Thom Yorke and Flying Lotus. Elusive, whimsical, a trickster and a money maker, DOOM rewrote the rules of rap music, rubbed people up the wrong way and paved the way for a whole generation of MCs.

As they neared their fortieth birthdays, Killer Mike (a black rapper from Atlanta with close links to OutKast) and El-P (a white Brooklyn b-boy and proponent of experimental rap) formed Run The Jewels, a rap supergroup which could easily have been yet another addition to a long list of hiphop misfires. But on the contrary, they are now an institution, a group that delights audiences and awakens consciences. Their new album RTJ4 is their most political and devastating. Let us take a look back at Killer Mike and El-P’s story.