Run the Jewels Slack Off as EMTs in Hilarious ‘Blockbuster Night Part 1’ Video
If Killer Mike and El-P have proved anything with their Run the Jewels project, it’s that they’re the most vicious rappers with the most golden hearts — but you probably wouldn’t want them as your EMTs.
In the new video for “Blockbuster Night Part 1,” the rappers portray a team of hilariously irresponsible emergency responders, who spend their late-night shift driving around Atlanta, hotboxing their ambulance, playing with medical equipment and trying to coax a cat from a tree. The closest they get to performing their actual duties is when they pull up at the site of a car crash, haul the Black Lips’ Cole Alexander away on a gurney and leave his friend in the grass. The night ends with the pair grabbing some late night grub at a diner when another patron suddenly suffers a heart attack causing El and Mike jump into action — the former dumps a load of sugar in his coffee and the latter shrugs and flips the guy off.
“Blockbuster Night Part 1” appears on the duo’s new album, Run the Jewels 2, which follows-up last year’s self-titled debut. The unlikely pair has been on an absolute tear since El-P was tapped to produce Killer Mike’s 2012 LP, R.A.P. Music, kicking off an artistic partnership, and friendship, that has been more than fruitful.
Rolling Stone caught up with El and Mike in Atlanta while they were shooting the “Blockbuster Night Part 1” video, and spoke to them about their early careers apart and their late success together. El, recalling a particularly rough point in his life, remembered how important it was to meet and start working with Mike: “I had a moment, where I almost said no to that — a moment where I almost said no to letting Mike into my world. Really. I needed to open up and stop controlling things, and that’s what saying yes to the Mike situation did for me. . .I look at it like maybe I’m the happiest I’ve been in my adult life. It might be that.”