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Last Updated:
May 6th, 2008 - 11:35:09 |
El-P
Spit Darkly
Former Company Flow rhyme-slayer El-P runs N.Y. indie-rap label Definitive Jux (Aesop Rock, Dizzee Rascal, Del tha Funkee Homosapien, etc.), produces break-neck beats dripping with sci-fi aesthetics and raps with an intense, verbal flood of paranoid prose that transports Brooklyn to 1984. His second solo, I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead, was perhaps the best rap album released last year. RDW chatted with El-P about how scary the world is.
The production on your album is insane, I feel like it’s where hip-hop should be heading.
Thanks, yeah, I kinda always have a little different tilt on the way that I make music that I guess works to my advantage, because some people it’s for them and other people can’t fucking get it.
With a song like “Up All Night,” I just wanna let go and punch someone.
Good. Yeah, you know, I think you’re right and I think with a record like mine, it’s about a lot of tension built up and you have to let the valve go a little bit.
Do you think the world’s gonna end?
I don’t know, I’m not a mystic Christian apocalyptic. I don’t think the world is just gonna end, I think it’s clearly gonna change. What do you mean, it’s just gonna blow up?
Well, the “mystic Christian apocalyptics” always seem to be the ones obsessed with the world ending …
I’m alarmed by where it’s heading, I think our lifestyle that we're used to and the way that society is operating is gonna rapidly come to a halt and change to something uncomfortable. I’d think you'd be a bit of a fool to not see what’s going on and draw that conclusion.
I don’t think there’s total chaos, I just see people becoming more disconnected from each other.
I think we’re already there, buddy. But it’s not up to me. I’m certainly not a fucking prophet or doomsdayer, but I think there’s gonna be a lot more of the violent moments than you may think. I think we’re being prepped ... “Orange alert!” The thing to keep an eye is when those things happen, what is the result? Ultimately, it always ends up being catalysts for social change and it’s never in the result of us gaining more freedom.
What’s funny is a lot of people know this already, like, questioning 9/11.
What’s even scarier is what if it’s really what they say, what if people are just fucking attacking us randomly? Whatever the true meaning behind an event like that is, it’s really what’s happened since then. On the books, we are socially set up for a totalitarian society. It’s weird that people will recognize what’s happening, but they won't draw the next obvious conclusion. It’s like being in a room and everybody’s got a gun, maybe eventually someone’s gonna get shot, but you’re crazy for thinking anybody’s gonna shoot me. But I’m no different from everybody else — I’m just trying to live.
A lot of times your music is compared to science fiction, is sci-fi a big part of your life?
Well, I’m influenced by Philip K. Dick and George Orwell, their style of writing takes everyday life and throws it through a metaphor and uses that medium of everything being possible to exaggerate a relevance to what’s happening now. But I’m not into spaceships. | RDW
El-P • 5/14 • The Crofoot Ballroom
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