Close Your Eyes (And Count to Fuck)
Run the Jewels
If "Legend Has It" is a battering ram, this is the surgical follow-up. "Close Your Eyes (And Count to Fuck)" opens with a brooding, almost suffocating tension — Zack de la Rocha's guest presence transforms the song into something volcanic. The production is more stripped and confrontational than celebratory, built around a hard, lurching rhythm that mimics the feeling of suppressed rage about to detonate. El-P's verses hit with technical precision while de la Rocha's contribution arrives like a rhetorical earthquake, his voice carrying decades of Rage Against the Machine's sociopolitical fury compressed into a few devastating lines. The track is explicitly about police violence and systemic racism, and it doesn't soften the message with metaphor — it stares directly into that wound. What makes it remarkable is how the collaboration feels inevitable rather than forced; both voices occupy different registers but share the same underlying despair-turned-fury. The outro, with de la Rocha's extended spoken delivery over a slowly dissolving instrumental, lingers like smoke after a fire. This is not background music. It demands your full attention and asks uncomfortable questions about complicity, power, and who pays the price for social order. You play this when anger needs articulation, when grief needs a harder container than sadness can provide.
fast
2010s
raw, heavy, confrontational
American hip-hop, political protest tradition
Hip-Hop. Political Hip-Hop. aggressive, defiant. Opens in suffocating suppressed tension before detonating into volcanic sociopolitical fury, then lingers in smoke-like despair through the closing spoken outro.. energy 9. fast. danceability 3. valence 2. vocals: aggressive male rap, confrontational delivery, politically charged spoken word. production: hard lurching rhythm, stripped minimalist beat, sparse confrontational arrangement. texture: raw, heavy, confrontational. acousticness 1. era: 2010s. American hip-hop, political protest tradition. When anger needs articulation and systemic injustice demands a soundtrack that doesn't soften its edges.