How did you get the texture to stand out in the photographs? The hands seem to be reflecting all different colors of light. Then the models were taken to an auto body shop, painted with four or five coats of super black paint. It was this super shiny black material meant to make it feel a little bit more like an artifact, like a Jack Kirby kind of thing, that had been left in space for millennia and then it just got discovered so was a bit scratched up. Tim: We landed on a material that felt like a car. Some of the early photos didn’t have really enough texture to go with the album. People would see the cover and be like, “This is a cool 3D piece.” And we’d say “Okay, let’s shoot it again.” We wanted to make sure the texture was showing up. The hands on RTJ4 almost look rendered, like 3D models. The hands from the Run The Jewels 4 cover after being painted.
I shot them kind of like I was shooting a Porsche catalog, or something super rich-looking, and in hyper detail. We’re bringing it into this very high-end reality and using the gold against the blue because the music felt kind of colder. Tim: We wanted to build this world out so I had the idea to make the hands gold.
We made the hands gold because we wanted to reflect that sentiment. Now the goal was not to take something from anybody but to take your personal power to realize that the chain did not need to exist anymore. So in our mind, it really started to become about people, and it really started to become about a declaration of self-worth and self-power and connection. Why is that?ĮL-P: When you see people holding the logo up in a crowd, no one has a chain. They’re actually real, and they weigh like 10 pounds each. Those were sculpted by hand by an amazing sculptor in Brooklyn and then plated with gold. We wanted to level up the imagery from illustration and bring it into the real world, so we had the hands sculpted into gold. Tim: The album sounded just like something you would hear blasting out of a car in New York in the ’80s. I was surprised to hear the logo on LP3 is actually a sculpture. I think it took about 10 hours to set up.ĮL-P: It was just fucking unbelievable to see it come to life. Luckily, we did all this before Run The Jewels got there. Then we built this whole world of smoke around the car matching the illustration, totally in camera. Because the shot is so wide, we needed to use this particular body and wide lens. We took the illustration and perfectly aligned it over top of a real car using a Canon 5D and a 35 millimeter SLR system. Behind the scenes of the Grand National photo-shoot. This looks like my car just blew up.” I don’t know this. Mike was advising this event, saying like, “You can’t have that smoke there. My set designer had some very unusual cotton-type industrial material that he could shape into the form of the smoke. Tim: I started referencing Fellini films and Terry Gilliam films, these films that are futuristic but also have this theater quality to them. Left: Package illustration from Run The Jewels 2 Right: Package photograph from Run The Jewels 4 Run The Jewels and Run The Jewels Here’s a combination of both interviews, which have been condensed and lightly edited for clarity. I spoke separately with El-P and Saccenti about the history of Run The Jewels’ visuals and how they’ve been brought to life through sculpture and photography for their most recent albums. “Different people have different moments in it that enhance it and turn it into what it is.” “I consider it to be sort of an art collective,” El-P says. However, both are quick to mention the contributions of numerous artists over the years, including illustrator Nick Gazin, who drew the first two covers and helped conceive the original logo, and, of course, Killer Mike, the other half of Run The Jewels. The creation of the covers has been spearheaded by El-P, one-half of Run The Jewels, and recently, Tim Saccenti, a photographer and filmmaker who’s worked with El-P since his second album. This is supported by auxiliary imagery for packaging and album skits, which hint at the duo escaping hell. By choosing a more symbolic art direction, the group sets the tone for their records to stretch beyond reality. This image goes directly against more traditional hip-hop album artwork, which tends to feature a portrait of the artist in varying forms. This simple image has graced the cover of every Run The Jewels album, communicating very clearly what the duo are here to do. Alongside the two antiheroes of Run The Jewels is a third, ever-present visual staple: the pistol and fist.