100 Greatest Songs of the 20’s So Far #82 Run The Jewels – Holy Calamafuck

Released: 2020

Released in the febrile, crosssroads like atmosphere in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, Run The Jewels’ fourth album was a profoundly meaningful attempt to channel anger. Wise enough not to meet the multi-layered reasons and consequences head on, it was a polemical but considered, if not in equal measure, enough so for Killer Mike to become a distinguishable voice in the messy societal interplay that followed.

It was in this context that on walkin’ in the snow he consciously used the rhymes ‘And you so numb you watch the cops choke out a man like me / Till my voice goes from a shriek to whisper, I can’t breathe’. The words however were not about Floyd’s death, but instead those of Eric Garner in similar circumstances in 2014.

Holy Calamafuck was one of it’s less polemical cuts, a tune which came in two parts, although both owed a debt to dub’s spaciness. If that sounds like it might signal entropy, forget it. Basslines rumble, lyrics are sprayed like paint onto an unsuspecting wall, whilst the second half gives the sensation of being on some kind of rap bungee jump. Coming back to the same shit over and over again is a curse, but for it the duo may well be called upon many more times before this thing is done.