El-P and Killer Mike’s new album feels political, if only in its spirit of refusal. Illustration by Nick Little

Run the Jewels is made up of El-P and Killer Mike, two forty-one-year-old rappers who, until a few years ago, were largely unaware of each other’s career. El-P was born and raised in a nice part of Brooklyn, at a time when New Yorkers could still argue that they were making the only hip-hop that mattered. In his late teens, he formed Company Flow, a rugged, bratty group that became part of a late-nineties underground held up by many as a modest, principled alternative to an increasingly showy mainstream. After Company Flow broke up, in the early two-thousands—one of their final shows was at a Ralph Nader rally—El-P went further underground, performing as a solo artist and founding Definitive Jux, an independent label built in his own crass, wounded image.

Mike grew up in a working-class neighborhood in Atlanta, and attended Morehouse College, where he met Big Boi, from Outkast. Eventually, Mike dropped out, opting for a life of rapping and small-stakes drug dealing. In 2000, he débuted on Outkast’s album “Stankonia,” as a profane, blustery foil to the slick economy of Big Boi and Andre 3000. At the time, an association with Outkast was sufficient grounds for signing a major-label record deal, and three years later Mike released a solo album, “Monster.” As Andre 3000 and Big Boi slowly abandoned Outkast, Mike became one of their most visible protégés.

El-P acknowledges the duo’s odd-couple sensibility on “A Report to the Shareholders / Kill Your Masters,” one of the best songs on Run the Jewels’ new album, “Run the Jewels 3”: “Hey, not from the same part of town, but we both hear the same sound coming.” By the end of the two-thousands, El-P and Mike were both adrift, slightly bitter, and consuming drugs at a worrying pace. Nearing their late thirties, they might have given up. Instead, in 2012, they began collaborating, and El-P ended up producing Killer Mike’s “R.A.P. Music.” The following year, they released the first Run the Jewels album, and then, in 2014, a second one.

Years removed from fame (or some approximation thereof), both men embraced the chance to rap as nobodies, creating songs that were outsized and fantastical. El-P makes beats that are chunky and abrasive, full of machine-age ennui. Their voices sound surprisingly good together—El-P’s is dry and caustic, Mike’s is saucy and gruff. Their collaboration is like an interracial buddy-cop movie from the eighties, in which they both get to be the one who deals with his authority issues by goofing around.

When El-P was in Company Flow, the group’s records often bore an inscription: “Independent as Fuck.” It was a badge of D.I.Y. pride, intended to distinguish them from their imagined foes, who treated hip-hop as a vocation rather than a calling. Today, when artists make their living not through recording but from merchandising, licensing, and touring, working outside a traditional label system demands an approach that is more playful and creative. The two men were brought together at the behest of a Cartoon Network executive, when they were both recording songs for the network. They débuted material from their second album on BuzzFeed. (They also released a remixed version of that album, consisting of beats made only from sampled cat sounds.) They’ve collaborated with rappers like Gangsta Boo and Trina, who are adored for their spitfire nastiness, but they’ve also opened for Jack White, whose relationship to hip-hop sometimes feels antagonistic. Most of their music is available for free online. In late December, they announced the surprise digital release of their new album with a YouTube video starring Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein, of “Portlandia.” A befuddled Mike steals the scene.

As a result, there’s a perception that Run the Jewels makes rap music for people who might feel estranged by rap music. It’s not quite “Hamilton.” But there’s something artisanal about it—the care and precision, the thoughtful, lockstep union between planet-tilting beats and thunderous boasts. There’s no ambition to reinvent hip-hop, just a desire to hone the craft. (The group’s name refers to a classic act, LL Cool J.) This unlikely partnership has changed El-P and Mike, simplified their motivations. “Run the Jewels 3” gives the impression of being the document of two grown men, raised under radically different circumstances, trying to make each other keel over in laughter—Mike is the “pervert with purpose that make you question your purpose,” El-P is ill-mannered and loutish, the embodiment of a horny, rightward swipe on Tinder. “Me and Mike just think alike, we can’t stop high-fiving,” El-P raps on “Stay Gold.” Their friendship feels like a model for finding kinship with unexpected people and discovering a common purpose.

The day after the election, Run the Jewels released “2100,” a wobbly spaceship of a track that seemed like an instant response to Donald Trump’s victory, though it was recorded well in advance. (The song appears on “Run the Jewels 3.”) “You defeat the Devil when you hold on to hope,” Mike raps, summoning a kind of optimism which suddenly felt unattainable to many of his fans.

On “Run the Jewels 3,” there are riffs on riots and conspiracies, crooked cops and a rigged system. Mike ridicules the CNN anchor Don Lemon, and grouses at “these All Lives Matter-ass white folk.” “Sittin’ next to a book and a gun / Ballot or bullet you better use one,” he raps on “Down,” the album’s majestic opener. But the two don’t despair. The album is dense and weighty, appreciative of the past that produced it, a redemption born out of what El-P calls “a pure absence of hope.” “My, my, I could have died y’all / A couple times I took my eyes off the prize y’all,” Mike remarks on “Down,” with a sense of astonishment that he’s survived long enough to discover his purpose.

Among those despondent about Trump’s rise, some chose to see the moment as filled with the potential for insurgent art. After all, hadn’t hard-core and hip-hop emerged in the wake of Ronald Reagan? But this lemonade-from-lemons confidence feels perverse—a retrospective assessment that risks ignoring the reality of the conditions that necessitated a song or an album. Now the focus is on survival, doing whatever is possible to stave off despondency.

Last month, the rapper Yasiin Bey, previously known as Mos Def, performed a series of farewell concerts. In the late nineties, Bey and El-P were label mates on Rawkus Records, which fancied itself a cornerstone of independent hip-hop, though one of its silent backers was the Fox media heir James Murdoch. Bey was among the most charismatic rappers of his time, and his albums were regarded as manifestos for progressive enlightenment. After a perplexing decade away, his return to the stage was seen as a chance to reclaim the possibility of another era. But the shows were rambling and messy, and “Dec 99th,” an album he released with the artist and journalist Ferrari Sheppard, feels sluggish and defeated. Bey was locked in a conundrum. We needed him to speak to us with the force and clarity of an irretrievable past.

We look to art for prophecy and new languages. But what happens when nobody knows what to say? Can art help make sense of this moment—of partisan Twitter armies, so-called “fake news,” and the mainstreaming of conspiracy theories? Will earnestness and conviction continue to seem insufficient in the face of cynical trolling? On “Panther Like a Panther (Miracle Mix),” Mike reminds us that sometimes our wildest imagination has difficulty keeping pace with real life. He spent much of 2016 involved in politics, as one of Bernie Sanders’s most visible advocates. He recalls sitting “with potential presidents” to talk about the war on drugs, and wonders, “Who thought the son of Denise would be the leader of people?”

Trump is barely mentioned on “Run the Jewels 3,” except for a reference to the Devil’s “bad toupee and spray tan.” But it feels like a protest album, in the way that many things that sound a note of refusal feel political these days. ♦