This week, Donald Trump will place one of his tiny hands on the Bible and his puckered lips will accept the US presidency: the first Twitter troll with a nuclear arsenal. Holed up at a secret location in Nashville, preparing for a tour that’s due to come to the UK and Europe at the end of March, firebrand rap duo Run The Jewels are somehow managing to see the funny side.
“As a guy who grew up on dystopian science fiction you can’t help but be morbidly amused,” says El-P, looking for a chink of light in the darkness. “It’s scary but hilarious, in a fucked-up way. It’s the folly of man. It’s also incredibly dangerous and deadly. The stakes themselves make the gallows humour that much more potent. But that’s me. If I had an executioner’s gun to the back of my head and he farted, I’d laugh.”
Beside him, his sparring partner Killer Mike leans in. “I’ve watched every inauguration since Reagan,” he says, in that Deep South baritone. “But this is the first time the President is gonna be sitting there tweeting: ‘I told y’all, fools.’”
Published in NME, 20 January 2017.
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