''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 Hip-hop or hip hop (originally disco rap) is a popular music genre that emerged in the early 1970s from the African-American community of New York City. The style is characterized by its synthesis of a wide range of musical techniques. Hip- ...

duo

Run the Jewels Run the Jewels, also known by the initials RTJ, is an American hip-hop Supergroup (music), superduo, composed of Brooklyn-based rapper and producer El-P and Atlanta-based rapper Killer Mike. They released their critically acclaimed Run the Jewe ...

. It was released on September 25, 2015, by Mass Appeal Records and RBC Records. The album, a remix of the duo's original album '' Run the Jewels 2'', 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, alternative finance, to fund projects "withou ...

campaigns on

Kickstarter Kickstarter, PBC is an American Benefit corporation, public benefit corporation based in Brooklyn, New York City, that maintains a global crowdfunding platform focused on creativity. The company's stated mission is to "help bring creative project ...

. 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 cover costs related to production, promotion and shipping physical copies of the album. 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 record producer and DJ. Born in Paterson, New Jersey, Smith attended Rutgers University for three years before dropping out to pursue a career in mus ...

, 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 Quakers, and he has scored several films. Portishead was formed in 1991. He named the band after the ...

Dan the Automator Daniel M. Nakamura (born August 29, 1966), better known by his stage name Dan the Automator, is an American record producer. He is the founder of the publishing company Sharkman Music and the record label 75 Ark. Early life Daniel M. Nakamura wa ...

and

Boots A boot is a type of footwear. Most boots mainly cover the foot and the ankle, while some also cover some part of the lower calf. Some boots extend up the leg, sometimes as far as the knee or even the hip. Most boots have a heel that is clearl ...

, among others. The album was released for free on September 25, 2015 via online streaming services, 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 an American website that aggregates reviews of films, television shows, music albums, video games, and formerly books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created ...

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

average In colloquial, ordinary language, an average is a single number or value that best represents a set of data. The type of average taken as most typically representative of a list of numbers is the arithmetic mean the sum of the numbers divided by ...

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 database, online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on Musical artist, musicians and Mus ...

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'' is an American Newspaper#Daily, daily newspaper that began publishing in Los Angeles, California, in 1881. Based in the Greater Los Angeles city of El Segundo, California, El Segundo since 2018, it is the List of new ...

'' 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 or hay fork is an agricultural tool used to pitch loose material, such as hay, straw, manure, or leaves. It has a long handle and usually two to five thin tines designed to efficiently move such materials. The term is also applie ...

'' 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 modern emoji is to fill in emotional cues otherwise missing from type ...

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

''; via archive.org 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 {{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 Novelty albums

Release and promotion

Critical reception

Track listing

See also

References

External links