It should come as no surprise that Run The Jewels are pretty good at this old-fashioned ‘selling music’ business: the hip-hop duo have made a habit of successful D2C campaigns fuelled by (not despite) their willingness to also make their music available for free to fans.
For their latest album, ‘RTJ4’, is coming out through BMG thanks to a recently-signed deal. “The truth of the matter is, [Run the Jewels] outgrew our capability to handle it correctly,” the group’s El-P told Billboard.
“We knew it was time to take a step up. We didn’t hit all of the marks that we set out to hit yet and we realised, at a certain point, you need that sort of muscle behind you,” added manager Amaechi Uziogwe.
The full piece is well worth a read (as is our writeup of Uziogwe’s speech at the NY:LON Connect conference in 2019, if you’ll excuse the plug).
Here’s one thing that stood out from Billboard’s piece: the new album passed more than $1m in sales in less than 48 hours after its pre-order went live. The album comes out on 5 June digitally, with the physical release set for September.
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