Track Of The Day: Run The Jewels feat. Zack De La Rocha - 'Close Your Eyes (And Count To Fuck)'

A fat chunk of modern day hip hop makes RW/FF's Track Of The Day today, a rare thing since I only feature hip hop that is of the very best quality. The second album from American duo Run The Jewels was definitely the finest hip hop record that reached my ears last year in 2014, and now they are releasing one of its best tracks as a single. The storming 'Close Your Eyes (And Count To Fuck)' also features the added bonus of Rage Against The Machine frontman Zack De La Rocha, and comes with a powerful black and white video depicting police brutality. "This video represents the futile and exhausting existence of a purgatory-like law enforcement system," said Killer Mike from RTJ "There is no neat solution at the end because there is no neat solution in the real world. However, there is an opportunity to dialogue and change the way communities are policed in this country." His musical partner El-P added: "This is a vision of a seemingly never-ending struggle whose participants are pitted against each other by forces originating outside of themselves."

The video's director AG Rojas said: "We had to exploit the lyrics and aggression and emotion of the track, and translate that into a film that would ignite a valuable and productive conversation about racially motivated violence in this country. It's provocative, and we all knew this, so we were tasked with making something that expressed the intensity of senseless violence without eclipsing our humanity."

"Our goal was to highlight the futility of the violence, not celebrate it..."