Killer Mike & El-P Plan ‘Run the Jewels 3’ Release Strategy in ‘Portlandia’ Sketch

Run the Jewels 3 is out now. As with previous RTJ entries, the album is really good and can be attained for the low price of $0.00. The 14-track album, which I’m hereby declaring The Official Soundtrack of the Resistance, arrived without warning on some nameless holiday and promptly set all family gatherings ablaze with subversion. But what if Killer Mike and El-P had chosen to have fans rummage through their own fecal matter for the new album instead?

That’s the premise of a new Portlandia sketch, starring Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein as a pair of marketing-savvy business peeps with a variety of atypical album release strategies. The pill-to-poop plan ultimately ended up in the “maybe pile,” which is great news for anyone not into the idea of swallowing USB sticks packed with some of the best music of 2016.

But back to this album. Danny Brown, Boots, and Zack de la Rocha all join Killer Mike and El-P to rage against the increasingly threatening machine. “A Report to the Shareholders / Kill Your Masters,” for example, sees the RATM frontman deliver some of the finest lines of his career:

[youtube ytid=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pg0byaqVaXo?wmode=transparent&jqoemcache=63bEf%5D

Speaking with VladTV earlier this year, Killer Mike described the album as “meaner, harder, and angrier” than the duo’s previous work and explained their reasoning for continuing the $0.00 vibes. “Why pretend like this is the fucking Puffy era?” Mike said. “The truth of it all is, if kids really love your stuff, they’re going to find a way to support it. So why try to trick them into first week sales and shit like that?”