El-P Reveals "Run The Jewels 4" Is Inspired By EPMD

With Run The Jewels 4 allegedly complete, El-P compared the group’s latest work to one of hip-hop’s most prominent collectives in EPMD during a recent interview. The 44-year-old Brooklyn-bred emcee took his talents to Vinyl Me Please‘s Good Convo podcast to discuss of a plethora of topics, but it wasn’t until the end of the podcast that host Michael Penn II decided to ask some questions about Run The Jewel’s forthcoming project, Run The Jewels 4.  

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El-P was gracious enough to drop some gems on the podcast in regards to his and Killer Mike‘s upcoming musical offering regarding the album’s length, guest features, and a hip-hop comparison that is a tough pair of shoes to fill. According to El-P, the album will be a total of eleven tracks that will run approximately 38 minutes long. The “3 Tearz” rapper then goes on to state that the LP features “guest appearances that you wouldn’t necessarily expect, as well.” 

El-P continued saying, “(This album is) the hardest sh*t we’ve ever done — front to back, punch in the face. Absolute mayhem from the moment it starts.”

The original Company Flow member then went on to state that the legendary hip-hop duo of Erick Sermon and Parrish Smith, AKA EPMD, inspired the efforts of their latest project proclaiming:

“We set out to do at a bare minimum what EPMD did for us… They basically have a legendary run of four records… They had four back-to-back the hardest, funniest, dopest records. It’s very rare to get four… I’ll put it to you this way: This should be the record that Run The Jewels falls off. This is not the record that Run The Jewels falls off.”

EPMD’s first four albums; Strictly Business (1988), Unfinished Business (1989), Business As Usual (1990), and Business Never Personal (1992) helped define and shape an era of hip-hop that inspired the Golden age of the world’s most influential music today. 

There isn’t an official release date for Run The Jewels 4 as of yet, but with the album supposedly complete we should expect it to arrive in the coming months. Listen to El-P’s full interview on the Good Convo podcast in the streaming link provided below.