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An El of a return to rap
By Rahul Verma, Metro 12.03.07
Poetry in motion: El-P's style and deliberately confused delivery means the listeners have to play their part to figure out what the song's about
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Rapper El-P hasn't released an album for five years. What's taken him so long? 'I thought it would be really dramatic to wait,' he deadpans. 'I figured I could come out with a record after a year, and keep my career going, or I could really shock everyone.'
For anyone familiar with the MC, producer and founder of independent hip hop label Definitive Jux, such a contrary explanation for the hiatus between his debut album, Fantastic Damage, and follow-up, I'll Sleep When You're Dead, will come as no surprise.
The Brooklyn native's career to date has been defined by going against the grain and challenging the status quo, whether as a solo artist, as part of groundbreaking trio Company Flow or through Definitive Jux, which has provided a home to left-field hip hop's waifs and strays since 1999.
Definitive Jux is peerless when it comes to challenging, forward-thinking hip hop. Its roster's range and quality is staggering and includes horror-core rapper Cage, visionary trio Cannibal Ox (featuring El-P behind the mixing desk), socio-political agitator Mr Lif, black power champions The Perceptionists, Aesop Rock's psychedelic hip hop and beatsmith RJD2 (who recently signed to XL Recordings).
El-P (real name Jaime Meline) is a maverick in the truest sense: his own music pokes, prods and pushes your imagination to go to far-out places and explore its deepest, darkest recesses.
I'll Sleep When You're Dead is a prime example. It finds the 30-year-old at the top of his game: samples, feedback, songs, guitars, beats, grunts, tirades and spoken word come together on a postmodern hip hop canvas, resulting in a surreal masterpiece statement on America in 2007.
The album actually took a long time in coming because of El-P's hectic schedule. 'In reality, I was busy: I toured my first LP for 18 months, then I did a film score, worked on a collaboration album, produced the Cage record and the Mr Lif record and was running my record label,' he says, softening a little.
'So I did the album as soon as I could - give or take a couple of months.' However, the delay also helped El-P's creative process.
'If you put a record out every year, you're operating from the same set of experiences and ideas as the year before,' he explains.
'Whereas I've got a lot of things to draw on. I was quite a different person at 25 compared to what I am now at 30. The s*** that I'm doing and what I'm trying to say, and the perspective that I'm coming from, has a different tone now.
'It's not necessarily a more authoritative one but you carry the weight of your years and that lends itself to a different voice. What I'm saying now has more nuances and brevity.'
What exactly it is that El-P is saying on I'll Sleep When You're Dead is far from obvious. But its mystery is also its allure: EMG might be reflecting on rampant consumerism; Run The Numbers looks at our obsession with numerals, from prison capacities to the Iraq body count to the lottery; Drive captures the futility and frustration of travelling by car (or sitting in traffic) in a megatropolis like New York; while Flyentology (featuring Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor) seems to comment on faith politics, whether that of Scientologists, right-wing Christians or Muslims.
Did he have to rein himself in to achieve this new brevity and focus? 'Unfortunately for my audience, I don't give a f*** and these demented collages and stories I'm telling reflect where I am in my head and where I live,' he says bluntly.
'I think the trick is the balance, if something is huge, chaotic and complicated, then it's worthless if it's not met with a moment to pause afterwards.'
El-P's rapping style can be compared with film director David Lynch's storytelling method: he doesn't rap in a linear or literal sense, instead leaving mystery, interpretation and the listener to play their part.
'There are a couple of different ways that I write: one of them is the rant. That comes from my battle rap upbringing where you say as much as you can,' explains El-P.
'You write until you figure out what you're writing about and that can yield great results. But I've made a point on this record not to employ this tactic as much as I have in the past. The difference is, I'm writing in a poetic style, not giving you the instruction manual.'
El-P hates the term abstract. But that's how he'd describe elements of his writing style.
'There is room for interpretation because of my love of playing with words and language,' he explains. 'You can tell a story with an abstract method, through putting words together that aren't directly related to evoke an emotion or an image.
'I do that because this is poetry. It's street poetry because it's from where I live and where I grew up. I play with it, turn it inside out and f*** with it, but there's an intent to it, and when I'm doing my best work, despite how f***ing weird it can be, people can understand just what I'm trying to say: that's when I know I've done my job.'
I'll Sleep When You're Dead is out next Monday on Definitive Jux.
