Runkus – Supernova

Easy Star Records (Digital & Vinyl)

Text: Davide Bor­tot

The first time Runk­us caught my ear was in 2015, rid­ing a ska rid­dim by Munich-based pro­duc­ers Moritz von Dorff and Ben­jamin Zech­er of One­ness Records. I fol­lowed the label most­ly out of home­town loy­al­ty, and ”Move Yuh Feet” hon­est­ly had­n’t done much for me. But the flow of this guy was some­thing else entire­ly: some­how 80s, yet com­plete­ly his own and fresh.

Five years lat­er, dur­ing one of those god­for­sak­en pan­dem­ic streams that some­how passed for real life back then, Jug­glerz dropped a song called ”Mon­ey” over the ”Brik Pan Brik” instru­men­tal. I can still hear how Shot­ta Paul rolls the R in the artist’s name: Rrrrrrunk­us. The tune under­neath I remem­ber just as well. Rather than rad­i­cal indi­vid­u­al­ism, Rrrrrrunk­us was pitch­ing com­mu­ni­ty and abun­dance as a sur­vival strat­e­gy. ”The tune was clear­ly con­ceived as a response to Skil­libeng and the zeit­geist – not a chal­lenge, not a lec­ture, just an alter­na­tive vision stat­ed with com­plete cer­tain­ty.

Two years after that, a lovers tune with Ky-Mani Mar­ley showed up in my Release Radar. ”GOODLOVE” took me straight back to the best Mar­ley moments of the ”Chant Down Baby­lon” era. Part­ly Ky-Mani’s voice, obvi­ous­ly – but just as much Runk­us’ par­tic­u­lar gift for car­ry­ing the weight of Jamaican music his­to­ry on his shoul­ders like it’s noth­ing: his­tor­i­cal­ly ground­ed, sure, but with exact­ly the right amount of irrev­er­ence you need to push things for­ward.

This Runk­us: seri­ous tal­ent, lots of jux­ta­po­si­tions, even more sto­ries.

So why dust off mild­ly thrilling anec­dotes from back in the day? Because all of the above – tal­ent, jux­ta­po­si­tions, sto­ries – applies just as well to Runk­us’ new album, which was final­ly released last Fri­day. ”SUPERNOVA” is his fourth LP, and it feels like a debut: the first coher­ent body of work that unmis­tak­ably car­ries his vision, even though, much like the ”OUT:SIDE” project with Todd­la T in 2022 or his work on Roy­al Blu’s album with the G.wav col­lec­tive last year, it’s shaped by col­lab­o­ra­tion and exchange. It’s clas­sic Runk­us – a con­tra­dic­tion that just does­n’t feel like one, more like every­thing here slots into place through some deep­er under­stand­ing of the world’s inner work­ings.

”SUPERNOVA” was made in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the artist Tavares Stra­chan, who until now has moved pri­mar­i­ly through the world of muse­ums and aca­d­e­m­ic dis­course. Most recent­ly, he exhib­it­ed at the Kun­sthalle Mannheim, with Runk­us com­ing on board to select and per­form music for the show. Now the shared jour­ney has tak­en a new shape. Stra­chan’s involve­ment in ”SUPERNOVA” is the­o­ret­i­cal as much as spir­i­tu­al. Some of his works pro­vid­ed direct source mate­r­i­al for songs; beyond that he served as an intel­lec­tu­al spar­ring part­ner. ”Tavares is kind of a cre­ative guide to me,” Runk­us explains in our RIDDIM inter­view. ”He push­es me.” Specif­i­cal­ly, the album opens and clos­es with Stra­chan in very con­crete terms: excerpts from an artist talk explor­ing the pow­er of art, and the vio­lence that is inher­ent to it by def­i­n­i­tion. A con­ver­sa­tion between a con­cep­tu­al artist and a cura­tor as an intro – and then, as the open­ing track, a clas­sic retro dance­hall tune (a decep­tive­ly clas­sic retro dance­hall tune, that much of a spoil­er feels fair) that views the cur­rent state of the world through the lens of sound sys­tem cul­ture. That’s Runk­us’ take on music and his world­view in a nut­shell: every­thing con­nects to every­thing else.

A few exam­ples of that approach to inter­con­nec­tiv­i­ty. Fol­low­ing the cin­e­mat­ic open­ing of the title track, the album is book­end­ed by ”SHEEP” and ”THE BOY WHO CRIED WOLF” – two tunes that trace an arc from Aesop to Peter Tosh, from a deeply poet­ic speech by the Wail­ers leg­end to some pret­ty hard-nosed reflec­tions on resist­ing the post­colo­nial instru­ments of oppres­sion. ”THE BOY WHO CRIED WOLF” itself runs just over eight min­utes across two beats, draw­ing a line from trib­al per­cus­sion from South Africa through ”Jesus Walks”-type neo-gospel to glob­al­ized dance­hall in the cur­rent Y2K revival mode – because in music his­to­ry too, every­thing con­nects, once you’re will­ing to fol­low the (Black) roots across dif­fer­ent pop eras. ”LAST NIGHT”? A dance­hall fling sto­ry that sounds like dis­co-funk and R&B and tips its hat to the dance clas­sic ”Last Night A DJ Saved My Life”. ”EGO DEATH”? A seem­ing­ly end­less stream-of-con­scious­ness rap that runs through land­marks of Jamaican music his­to­ry – includ­ing Runk­us’ father, the singer Deter­mine, who passed from can­cer in 2025 – while flip­ping famil­iar gun-and-killing metaphors in ways you don’t see com­ing. ”LIFE OVER DEATH”? Quotes G‑Unit and New Jack Swing and sam­ples its way around the world. ”PLEASE DON’T COME TO MARS”? A mas­ter­class in artis­tic and finan­cial self-deter­mi­na­tion, with zero manos­phere non­sense. ”3310”? A song about the leg­endary Nokia cel­lie. But also: a dem­bow homage, a case for the social and eco­nom­ic val­ue of dance­hall, and a view of the many of Jamaican soci­ety through the lens of the one thing that gen­uine­ly brought every­one togeth­er for a while.

Sounds like a lot?

It is.

Some­times, in this swirl of ideas and ref­er­ences, Runk­us los­es me. Sug­gest­ing that Israel and Pales­tine set­tle their con­flict via sound clash, or fram­ing Don­ald Trump as just anoth­er gar­den-vari­ety, horny clown (”And me know seh Don­ald Trump him love punany bad”) – that reads as a lit­tle too easy, a lit­tle too close to the peren­ni­al­ly com­fort­able idea that the defin­ing crises of our time can sim­ply be basslined away by the only good sys­tem there is, because ”they” are all the same any­way. And when Runk­us and his co-pro­duc­er reach for Cuban horns and rock riffs on ”Every Ghet­to Youth is A Star” to land an unde­ni­ably wor­thy mes­sage, the skip­ping itch kicks in. But hon­est­ly, how does my per­son­al taste mat­ter against the sheer pow­er this album deliv­ers? Isn’t it far more sig­nif­i­cant that the co-pro­duc­er in ques­tion is Runk­us’ broth­er Zaire-Zidane, and that the two are step­ping out togeth­er in this form for the first time, just over a year after the death of their father? Does­n’t what Sean Paul – the album’s only fea­tured guest – puts down on ”SURE AS THE SUN” mat­ter much more: that you can kill how­ev­er many mes­sen­gers you want, but nev­er the mes­sage itself? And does­n’t the thought that Tavares Stra­chan shares at the very end of the album just about cov­er it? ”To be frus­trat­ed by an artist is a good thing. Irri­ta­tion is help­ful.” Feel free to draw your own con­clu­sions.

In any case, one more line from that out­ro stays. ”There is a cer­tain big­ness of imag­i­na­tion that is scal­able for all of us – if we just allow our­selves to find it.” The speak­er is cura­tor and inter­view­er Paul Hold­en­gräber, address­ing Tavares Stra­chan. But his words could just as eas­i­ly be the take­away from lis­ten­ing to this remark­able album: those who allow them­selves to think, believe and feel big – for them, much becomes pos­si­ble.

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