''Meow the Jewels'' is a

remix album A remix album is an album consisting of remixes or rerecorded versions of an artist's earlier released material. The first act who employed the format was American singer-songwriter Harry Nilsson ('' Aerial Pandemonium Ballet'', 1971). As of 200 ...

by American hip hop duo

Run the Jewels Run the Jewels, also known by the initials RTJ, is an American hip hop super-duo composed of Brooklyn-based rapper and producer El-P and Atlanta-based rapper Killer Mike. They released their critically acclaimed self-titled debut studio albu ...

. It was released on September 25, 2015, by

Mass Appeal Records Mass Appeal Records is an American independent record label founded in 2014. The label is the music division of the Mass Appeal Media Group. In May 2014, it was announced that American rapper Nas was launching an indie label with Mass Appeal w ...

and

RBC Records RBC Records is an American online independent record label and management company founded by partners Brian Shafton and Bob Grossi. It provides artists and independent labels with a full-service "virtual label" alternative to signing with a maj ...

. The album, a remix of the duo's original album ''

Run the Jewels 2 ''Run the Jewels 2'' is the second studio album by American hip hop duo Run the Jewels, which consists of Killer Mike and El-P. The album was released early for free on October 24, 2014, and the following day on iTunes. It was made available on CD ...

'', has all instrumentals replaced with sounds of cats.

Release and promotion

Run the Jewels, as part of the original album release, offered a series of absurd ''"deluxe releases"'' for large sums of money, parodying indulgent "stretch goals" offered on

crowdfunding Crowdfunding is the practice of funding a project or venture by raising money from a large number of people, typically via the internet. Crowdfunding is a form of crowdsourcing and alternative finance. In 2015, over was raised worldwide by crow ...

campaigns on

Kickstarter Kickstarter is an American public benefit corporation based in Brooklyn, New York, that maintains a global crowdfunding platform focused on creativity. The company's stated mission is to "help bring creative projects to life". As of July 2021, ...

. One of the less expensive of these was the group creating a remix album using cat sounds; a group of fans launched an online campaign to raise the money to pay the group the requested $40,000 to do this. The campaign in fact raised over $60,000, which Run the Jewels announced would be donated to charity. Several other record producers announced that they would be contributing to the remixes, including

Just Blaze Justin Gregory Smith (born January 8, 1978), known professionally as Just Blaze, is an American hip hop record producer and DJ. Born in Paterson, New Jersey, Blaze attended Rutgers University for three years before dropping out to pursue his mu ...

, Prince Paul, The Alchemist,

Geoff Barrow Geoffrey Paul Barrow (born 9 December 1971) is an English music producer, composer, and DJ. He is a member of the bands Portishead, Beak and supergroup Quakers, and has scored several films. Portishead—formed in 1991—was named after the s ...

Dan the Automator Daniel M. Nakamura better known by his stage name Dan the Automator, is an American record producer from San Francisco, California. He is the founder of the publishing company Sharkman Music and the record label 75 Ark. Early life Nakamura was bo ...

and

Boots A boot is a type of footwear. Boot or Boots may also refer to: Businesses * Boot Inn, Chester, Cheshire, England * Boots (company), a high-street pharmacy chain and manufacturer of pharmaceuticals in the United Kingdom * The Boot, Cromer Str ...

, among others. The album was released for free on September 25, 2015, while the pre-order for the limited-edition 2xLP was made available on the same day.

Critical reception

''Meow the Jewels'' was met with generally positive reviews. At

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc ...

, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from professional publications, the album received an

average In ordinary language, an average is a single number taken as representative of a list of numbers, usually the sum of the numbers divided by how many numbers are in the list (the arithmetic mean). For example, the average of the numbers 2, 3, 4, 7 ...

score of 74, based on six reviews. Neil Z. Yeung of

AllMusic AllMusic (previously known as All Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the databa ...

said, "Whereas the original ''Run the Jewels 2'' was a perfect soundtrack for a night of mayhem, ''Meow the Jewels'' is the comedown after all that rabble-rousing". Randall Roberts of ''

Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the U ...

'' said, "''Meow the Jewels'' deliver emotional depth befitting nature's most psychologically elusive creature". Adam Finley of ''

PopMatters ''PopMatters'' is an international online magazine of cultural criticism that covers aspects of popular culture. ''PopMatters'' publishes reviews, interviews, and essays on cultural products and expressions in areas such as music, television, ...

'' said, "Most of the internet's ideas end up in a wet mess on the kitchen floor, but this one, this one sticks". Ryan Dombal of ''

Pitchfork A pitchfork (also a hay fork) is an agricultural tool with a long handle and two to five tines used to lift and pitch or throw loose material, such as hay, straw, manure, or leaves. The term is also applied colloquially, but inaccurately, to t ...

'' originally awarded the album a cat

emoji An emoji ( ; plural emoji or emojis) is a pictogram, logogram, ideogram or smiley embedded in text and used in electronic messages and web pages. The primary function of emoji is to fill in emotional cues otherwise missing from typed conver ...

,Run the Jewels: Meow the Jewels
reviewed at ''

''; via

archive.org The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music, ...

as opposed to the publication's usual rating out of 10, saying "while some tracks unwisely try to replicate the source material's dystopian energy, the best moments come when remixers go blissfully off-script". The score was later revised to a 7/10. Steve "Flash" Juon of ''RapReviews'' said, "The amount of enjoyment you take out of this is undoubtedly directly proportional to the amount of money you put into ''Meow the Jewels''".

Track listing

References

External links

''Meow the Jewels''
at

Archive.org The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music, ...

{{Authority control 2015 remix albums Albums free for download by copyright owner Albums produced by El-P Mass Appeal Records albums Run the Jewels albums Zoomusicology