Posing On Your Dollar

Run the Jewels featuring Pharrell and Zack de la Rocha “JU$T”

The best posse cuts make the most of contrasting the voices of every rapper on the track, the way RZA deliberately constructed Wu-Tang songs around vocal timbres like they were instruments in a band. “JU$T” pulls this off beautifully by approaching the same lyric – “look at all these slave masters posing on your dollar” – from three different angles with escalating intensity. Pharrell lays things out in his hook with a cool-headed logic, presenting every “respectable” path towards class mobility as simply buying into the oppressive capitalism of those in power. His voice, always so smooth and chill, sugars the pill a bit, whereas Killer Mike repeats the refrain without diluting the bitterness even a bit. And then when Zach de la Rocha finishes the chorus, it all tips over into vicious unrestrained fury and disgust. It’s a little bit like the galaxy brain meme.

The first two times you hear de la Rocha on the track it’s like a warning, and when he shows up for a full verse at the end his tone shifts expectations. He’s not doing his tension-to-scream move here, but rather adapting his intense presence to the minimalism of the track. He’s a voice of moral clarity expressing uncertainty about the immediate future, sure that something is about to blow up but wary about expecting the sort of revolution he wants. He’s concerned about half-measures – “how can we be the peace when the beast gonna reach for the worst?” – and skeptical of how much anyone is willing to fight. And in the end, he’s cynical about every movement just being turned into a sellable aesthetic, which is something he knows all too well from his career: “The breath in me is weaponry, but for you, it’s just money.”

Buy it from Run the Jewels.