Run the Jewels Participate in Cat-Oriented Album Kickstarter
UPDATE: On Wednesday, Meow the Jewels reached its $45,100 funding goal. Just Blaze, Zola Jesus, Prince Paul, Dan the Automator, Portishead’s Geoff Barrow and Alchemist are among the artists confirmed to contribute to the charity remix album.
Run the Jewels‘ El-P and Killer Mike have said they’d be willing to show their softer side if a Kickstarter to create a remix album with music derived solely from cat sounds gets funded. A fan launched the crowd-funding campaign, dubbed Meow the Jewels – which would involve remaking the music on their upcoming RTJ2 record, due out October 28th – and El-P has voiced his support of the project on Twitter, offering to donate his share of the proceeds to charity.
“Me and @MeowTheJewels are in contact and working out the details of what [it] will be,” he wrote in one tweet. “If Meow the Jewels happens, I intend to donate the money somewhere that will directly benefit the families of Eric Garner and Mike Brown,” he explained in another.
Like El-P, the project’s organizer has said that a portion of any profits would go to charity, namely to “the families of those who have lost their lives to police brutality this year and a smaller portion will go to help neglected animals.”
Rewards for funding include digital copies of Meow the Jewels and tweets from the campaign’s official account, a matchbook, catnip, a “surprise” (“maybe a wristband, maybe a bottle opener”) and stickers. The highest priced rewards include having the campaign organizer come to a funder’s house and recording his or her cat and “maybe” getting the pet’s name in the liner notes and, for $5,000, a limited vinyl copy of Meow the Jewels that Killer Mike and El-P have signed. The campaign had raised nearly $4,700 of its $45,100 goal at the time of this post.
Run the Jewels previewed RTJ2 in August with the track “Blockbuster Night Part 1.” The record is set to include appearances by Rage Against the Machine‘s Zack de la Rocha, Blink-182’s Travis Barker and others. Last week, they premiered the glitchy RTJ2 track “Oh My Darling Don’t Cry” on SoundCloud.