Meow The Jewels, the recreation of Run The Jewels’ sophomore album Run The Jewels II that replaced the standard instrumental tracks with cat noises, was a great way for the duo of El-P and Killer Mike to draw attention to themselves with a fascinating product, but as they point out in a new 3-minute “paw-cumentary,” it was never really about that.

The short film talks about how the album came to be, from the tongue-in-cheek pre-order option, to the fundraising campaign to the recording and production process, which involved various top-shelf producers.

“Meow The Jewels was a joke, it was just a joke,” El-P said. “I was smoking weed at the kitchen table, trying to come up with the Mass Appeal pre-order packages for all the vinyl and all that shit. I was just bored and thought it would be funny if we just came up with a bunch of fake ones […] The money is going towards a good cause and that’s kind of why we did it. That is exactly why we did it. We wouldn’t waste our time otherwise.”

The video includes a breakdown of just what those good causes are, including $20,000 each for charities chosen by the families of Eric Garner and Michael Brown, both of whom were killed by police officers.

“That’s the whole thing about this record, is it’s just about people man,” El-P said. “The cat thing is like… it means nothing.”

Meow The Jewels is available to download for free from Run The Jewels’ website.

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HT: Pitchfork
Featured image courtesy of Mass Appeal