Run the Jewels remixes the RTD game
Hip-hop duo Run the Jewels dish the dirt on their ready-to-drink (RTD) brand Juice Runners and its debut mezcal-based serve.
American hip-hop duo Run the Jewels are respected names in music, having been nominated for a Grammy Award and found on the receiving end of critical acclaim for their four albums since forming in 2013.
This year, the pair – Killer Mike (real name Michael Santiago Render) and EL-P (real name Jaime Stuart Meline) – have added a side hustle to their repertoire – a ready-to-drink brand called Juice Runners, which they’re treating with the same seriousness as a full-time gig.
However, distinguishing themselves from some other spirits brands introduced by famous figures, this one comes from a place of passion and is no vanity project, the pair tell The Spirits Business.
As they join the Wu-Tang Clan as special guests on the rap group’s final tour through North America, they’ve introduced the first canned cocktail in the line, the Paloma Remix, which offers a twist on Mexico’s signature serve.
The twist is mezcal, which goes against the Tequila custom for celebs, but EL-P says he fell in love with the spirit “before it even became a thing”.
“My wife’s grandmother was living right outside of Mexico City and I never liked Tequila,” he recalls.
“Mezcal wasn’t even a thing at the time. I didn’t even really understand or know of its existence. She started coming back from visiting her grandmother and bringing these un-labeled clear bottles that she was buying in a town called Querétaro, which is about three hours outside of Mexico City. She would bring this shit back and my reaction was just ‘what the fuck is this?’. It was this glorious liquid, smoky, and it had a real flavour.
“I turned Amaechi [Uzoigwe, Run the Jewels and Juice Runner manager] onto it and we got together and ultimately became obsessed with mezcal. When we started to think about doing a drink, which evolved out of our involvement with all the different beer collabs that we were doing, and which we really loved doing, I was like, ‘lets do mezcal’.
“Once we knew that we were doing a mezcal then it was ‘what’s a great beverage with mezcal? Right, a Paloma’ – and that was sort of the origin of it.”
Killer Mike, meanwhile, concedes he’s not a “full-time drinker”, sharing that he’s more of a cannabis guy and will drink around three to four times a year, but EL-P’s enthusiasm for mezcal rubbed off on him.
“At first I thought it was just like another Tequila, but Jamie really taught me the history of it, the appreciation of flavour and so on. What I love about what we managed to create, whether it was beers or even through this spritzer, it gives me – someone that is more of a novice, or light drinker – something to enjoy.
“So when we’re at those rock and roll parties and stuff, I don’t have to throw back the Jack Daniel’s or go hard. I can drink something that makes me feel light and spry.”
Balancing act
The pair have contrasting roles that play off each other: EL-P is the “connoisseur” who is ‘deep in the process’, while Mike, “the novice”, brings them back in touch with the rest of the world.
“Mike’s less of a drinker,” adds Uzoigwe, “but as El-P validates the quality and the authenticity, the fact that Mike isn’t a big drinker is that when he tastes something and likes it, that’s a great barometer for your average person out there, or so to speak, your average consumer.”
The two are in sync when making music, but they’ve found a good balance to their burgeoning beverage empire too, as EL-P explains.
“Mike and I didn’t grow up being like ‘we want to be liquor or beverage makers’. We’re rappers! But the magic about our relationship artistically has always been the balance.
“So Mike being ‘all right, I don’t really know about this’, it doesn’t mean that the balance between us in terms of the creation of it isn’t important. In other words, the same way that I know if I make a beat and I love the beat, it’s not really the shit yet, until my partner loves it.
“We’ve applied the artistic idea of Run the Jewels to this because I will sit and really help and test and develop the flavour of the drink. But it’s not complete until I know that my friend, who’s not necessarily even about that sh0t, you know, likes it too.”
So does Mike like it?
“Honestly I can stand and say that if I’m at the family barbecue, your uncle Mike’s only gonna have a drink or two, but I’d be comfortable having these,” he confirms.
Alongside giving it the green light, Mike was also a big part of the taste test process, of which he remembers a little loosely.
“I was getting off stage and having to do a taste test, and then I had to do a second show.
“I was a little lost at the second show,” he laughs. “I had to taste so much, but I’ve enjoyed the process again, because I’m not much of a drinker. So my thing is, I didn’t expect it to taste good. And I can say the reason I’ve never become a real drinker is because, to me, most spirits don’t taste good. This doesn’t overwhelm me and I can say I’ve gained a real appreciation of mezcal and through our experience with it.”
Extension of their art
EL-P adds that two always have had their own visions, but there was always an intangible magic when they came together.
This, he says, translated into Juice Runners because “we’re looking at this thing like it’s just an extension of our art. It’s this opportunity to be creative and for us to trust our combined instincts about something. If I were to make a beat that I really loved, and Mike just wasn’t feeling it, it wouldn’t be a Run the Jewels beat. When we come together and we decide on something, there’s a balance between us that makes the thing that we’re doing really cool.”
Sharing his thoughts on the RTD space, EL-P jokes that “you’re never ever going to meet an adult who’s like ‘You know what? I really love a good canned drink’.”
Juice Runners is looking to set the bar higher though, especially as mezcal is expensive and the margins are tricky, as EL-P notes: “We’re not making mass consumption beverages. We’re approaching it like we’re making our art. We’re approaching it like Mike and I are dropping a single.”
Expanding on where they stand in the market, EL-P explains: “Here’s the thing, you can’t stand in front of a bunch of people and sell them some BS, you know? Like we can’t anyway. We never made a song for it to be a radio hit. We’re creating cool things and we don’t have to bend our sort of integrity. We are not intending to just be this machine that just grinds shit out on a schedule. I think we’ve been really particular and really meticulous about what we’re doing.
“We’ve only had the one drink and the reaction to it has been so amazing, so it’s this rare thing and we didn’t jump into it. We really tested it. We really created it. It really took time. We worked on the artwork, we worked on the entire thought of the whole thing.
“It’s like we’re dropping a single, that’s how me and Mike understand how to do things. We don’t really understand how to do it another way. There’s a lot of involvement in this and I couldn’t stand next to if it was just some weird thing where someone offered us some money and slapped our name on like a bag of chips. Not that I don’t like rap snacks – no disrespect.”
“I was gonna say, I can do rap snacks,” Mike throw in.
More to come
While the Paloma Remix is the first in the Juice Runners line, another RTD, Sea Legs, a pineapple-based rum Punch that was made with Two James Spirits’ Doctor Bird Jamaican rum, will debut before the end of the year.
“We’ve spent months and months testing and trying to create that,” says ELP.
“There’s nothing you’re going to taste that the other person just gave up on, like we saw it all the way through,” Mike continues. “When you come to a Run the Jewels show or concert, I want the community to be able to buy a product that’s been vetted this seriously.”
In addition, there’s a zero-proof adaptogenic cocktail with functional ingredients in the pipeline too, and going bigger, a ‘collectors’ rum, crafted with distillers in St Lucia and spirits expert Fred Minnick.
Of his interest in rum, EL-P notes that in some regards, the category is “a little undiscovered”.
“From someone who fell in love with rum by touring and drinking Havana Club 15 years ago, that was when I first realised that rum wasn’t just like a mixer.
“When we started getting educated and really being able to taste the whole spectrum of what rum was, and realising that there was rum that didn’t taste anything like what you would know rum is, that was when it was sealed for me. I had no clue how deep it went.”
Getting Minnick on board was a big move, which EL-P calls a “crazy honour”.
“He’s actually part of our crew and he tasted what we’re doing. He has never co-signed anybody. He’s always been an independent sort of critic and connoisseur of liquor.
“That was a huge co-sign for us, that he was like ‘I think you guys really have something’. He got down with us and it was definitely really cool to get to know him, and once we understood what he did and what he represented in that space, it’s crazy that yeah, we’re inspiring that in people.”
Building step by step
Using their music platform, the duo are known for advocating for local communities and pushing for diversity, and the same will be so with Juice Runners.
On how how they’ll be fostering a similar space through the brand, Mike explains: “We’re friends – hip-hop kids who grew up in the 1980s and 1990s – but what we realise is, in the same way for hip hop kids in the ’80s and ’90s, we were a section, and then there were the skateboarders and the BMXers, and you had all these little communities of kids that kind of converged.
“I think the Juice Runners are essentially that. They’re different people of different interests, but their community is around our music. There’s a place for us in that community. There’s nothing I love more than being in my own restaurant and seeing people mix drinks and have the Juice Runners just in their hand, hanging out.
“I know those were people who know our songs. It’s more than just products to throw into the marketplace, what we’re doing is making sure our community has stuff that’s reflective of us now, that values in the same way that Jamie and I blend on stage and playing musically, that we blend in these weird, wacky, cool lifestyles of people.”
Currently, the Paloma Remix can be found in select retailers throughout the US, including shelves at Whole Foods, but Uzoigwe maintains they’re taking things slowly.
He notes that there’s a roadmap in place for the brand and a wish list of things they want to do (including a Margarita), but they’re taking it step by step and the idea is to first win the summer and move from there.
“We are going state by state,” he says. “Once we have the ability to extend to the UK and the EU, we will.”
“We’ll go where we’re invited,” adds EL-P.
“If it were to all not work out, at the very least we can sleep at night because what we’ve dropped and what we are planning to drop matches up with the sort of integrity of the way that we feel about art and how we’re involved in it.
“It would be amazing all of a sudden to be a liquor kingpin, but at the same time all we’ve ever cared about has been whatever we put out, and has to be just something that we can stand by, something cool, something that we can like and really say just represents us.
“So yes, we would love it to expand and to get bigger. And, you know, I think it will, because it’s really good shit. But again, at the end of the day, if it just didn’t work out, we would be proud of what we did.”
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