iHipHop Admin For being one of the most heralded figures in independent hip-hop, El-P sounds impressively grounded while talking to CrackSpace. Since his entrance into the game with former Rawkus trio Company Flow, the NYC native has earned a reputation as one of the most avant-garde, consistent producers in the industry, with his highly successful Definitive Jux label housing indie mainstays like Cage and Aesop Rock; and as an abstract, angst-filled lyricist. With every project he approaches, El-P seems to take on a totally different style of production: his Fantastic Damage solo debut deftly organized hazy, abrasive sounds, and his High Water instrumental LP saw him experimenting with jazz. With his sophomore LP, I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead, El keeps the trend going, experimenting with even more sounds and rapping with the just as much urgency as he ever has. His explanation? “I’m just a fucked up person.” Read on to see El-P talk about his latest record, life in
HHC: It’s been a minute since your last solo album. In between Fantastic Damage and now, with all of your work that you do with Def Jux, how has your focus been balanced?
El-P: It’s been balanced as well as it possibly could. The fact is that what I do now, most of the time it’s bigger than just me. I’m working to help other artists and I’m helping to produce for other people. I try and balance it as much as I can, but I can’t really do both at the same time. So eventually, I had to be like, “Yo, I’m going to do this. I have to go back into my little world, now.” So eventually, that’s all it was about. I was like, “Yo, I have some shit I’ve gotta change.”
HHC: What kind of viewpoint did you use for the new album? Did you have a specific mission or message that you wanted to convey?
El-P: Just a fuckin’ eloquent translation of one man’s experience during strange times, trying to walk through the muck and mire and live like everyone else is. That’s my viewpoint. I just wanted to be an honest voice. I have no intention of getting on a soapbox and preaching to anybody, or anything like that. I just wanted to capture my time, and my head is the filter. I just wanted to tell some stories and to create a record that, ten years from now, people could look back and have some sort of understanding of what it really meant to be alive during this time. I just wanted to give the fans something I think they’ve been craving for, which is honesty and genuine expression. And that can be fucked up. … Something that we can look at, where even if it’s not your voice, it’s a voice that makes you feel something, and you understand that there is something to be said here. Whether or not I succeeded is up to everybody else.
HHC: I read something that quoted you as saying, “I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead is what I imagine
El-P:
HHC: Your style is always out there, production-wise and lyrically. When I told a friend I was interviewing you, he told me to ask you what drugs you’re on when you make your beats. Where does that style come from?
El-P: Drugs! It comes from drugs, of course! [laughs] It’s funny when I get asked that question, because I wonder…it’s because I’m a fucked up cat, basically. I’m a fucked up person. That’s basically the answer. But other than when you’re sitting in your apartment in Brooklyn, …and you’re fucking trying to fucking write something in the pad, and you’re hearing die rants and people screaming, and all types of noise, and cars, and you start walking around and then you hear birds chirping, and church bells in the distance, singing. All this noise and all this shit in conflicted frames of my skull, it kinda worked its way into my mind as one, and I couldn’t separate it. I’m not one of these people that can live somewhere and make music….I just pick up on the shit, and I corporate it in. I’m just trying to turn chaos into beauty. That’s all I can tell you; I’m a fucked up person.
HHC: You’re also versatile, which is odd for someone whose style is as unique as yours. Your beats will be a certain way, while your beats for Mr. Lif would be more structured.
El-P: Well, more traditionally structured.
HHC: How difficult is it for you to work with artists who aren’t always on the same page as you are?
El-P: I think the key to being a good producer is being able to make music for other people that’s not the same shit you do for yourself. It’s a challenge, and it’s something I’ve learned how to do. If I’m doing something for Lif, I know what Lif wants. Lif wants something much more straightforward, and I’m going to give it to him. Because I’m going to work with him to get the music he wants out of him. Of course, my vision is going to be a part of it, because I’m a producer and because I’m an artist and we’re working together, but of course I’m going to give Lif something different than I’m giving me. To be honest, no one wants what I use for beats [laughs], and I can’t do it for anyone else. It’s kind of hard to explain, but that’s like my blood right there, that’s my DNA. That’s something that I can’t create for anyone else, because I have to be 100 percent involved in the process, as plain as possible. And the thought behind the shit, the way that I do it…I would never subject anyone to that process [laughs]. They’d kill me. They’d murder me. … I have to be able to provide people different things, I have to be able to do different things for different situations. I’ve worked really hard at being able to be versatile.
HHC: With the new album, you also have a lot of rock and jazz artists: Mars Volta, Cat Power, Trent Reznor. What made you take that approach?
El-P: Put it this way: name one hip-hop record that you’ve ever heard that was comprised of samples from all hip-hop records. All your favorite classic hip-hop records are sampled from rock, jazz, funk, soul, Brazilian music, all different genres. To me, to have the Mars Volta on a section is like finding the Mars Volta in a dusty bin for a dollar when it was recorded in the 60s. So I just look at it as sampling, I just like to weave it in. I’m a hip-hop producer and a student of music, I’ve got thousands and thousands of records of all different types of genres.
Shit that fucks my head up is that all these producers out here have the same record collections that I do. More, actually—20,000 records, 30,000 records—all these different records that they have, with all these different genres of music, with all these different structures, different ideas; and they keep coming up with the same wannabe career beats every time. That shit fucks my head up. I’m like, “How are you listening to all this music, and not coming up with some different shit?” So to me, working with other musicians is just natural; it just makes sense to me. If I would’ve found your part on a record, I would have sampled that shit. But now, I don’t have to clear it.
HHC: Within the past few years, you’ve really revamped your studio and invested a lot into it. What do you think is the most valuable addition that you’ve made?
El-P: Do you want directions to my studio, too, so I can get robbed? What the fuck? I’m a musician, and I put my money into it. I’m not going to go down a list of shit of money and prices.
HHC: I didn’t mean price-wise, I meant what’s the most valuable musically.
El-P: Ohhhh, my bad. I thought that was a weird question. Now I understand your question, and I’ll answer it. Pro Tools is the most valuable shit, in terms of, it’s the hub. It connects all the other instruments, all the other synthesizers and functions, and everything that I use. It’s where it all comes together, and where the final touches put on it.
HHC: It’s 2007. Five years later, would you still rather be mouth-fucked by Nazis unconscious?
El-P: [laughs] Yeah, man. Pretty much.
HHC: Advance copies of your album had the specific names of their recipients watermarked all over them to help thwart bootlegging. Do you think downloading has downgraded the quality of music?
El-P: I’m not one to bitch and complain about shit. To me, it’s just become a part of the culture. To some degree, I can’t blame motherfuckers for it. Kids are used to it now, it’s established. Cats can get ahold of a record before the shit’s on sale. I leave it up to the artist to make a record that is deserving of a kid spending his hard-earned cash. It’s there, so we’ve got to work with it and figure it out. A lot of what motherfuckers are mad about is that they put piece of shit records out, and they can’t trick kids into buying it anymore. They can’t even put one single out and there’s a bunch of hot trash on the album. And a kid is like, “That single’s the shit!” and they run out with their $15, which is too much anyway for something that they can get free, then they buy the album and one single is the only hot song on the record.
Basically, kids now, they’re just smarter. They just want to hear the shit and they just want to know they’re not getting scammed. A lot of that scamming is big right now, they’re putting out wack albums. They’re not putting any effort into it, they’re not taking the shit seriously as an art form. … If a motherfucker likes my record, of course, my plea would be that if you really do like it, please buy it. It’s going to be better quality, I’m going to package the shit right, it’s going to look great, and if you come out, you’re going to get all types of shit, and it’ll allow me (to keep making music). It’s a relationship between the fans. All they’re asking us is, “Make some quality shit so that I don’t have to get it for free, listen to your wack mediocre album and toss it into the trash in my computer.” That’s how I look at it.
HHC: Any possibility of another Company Flow record?
El-P: This year, we’re planning on releasing the 10-year anniversary of Funcrusher Plus on Definitive Jux Records. It’s going to have a DVD of the last show we did in 2000, and we’re talking about doing new songs for that one. I don’t think it’s any type of full-fledged reunion, but we’re definitely talking about getting down on some [records]. But basically, I think that’s going to be the end of it, but you never know what to do.
