I'll Sleep When You're Dead - El P (2007)

a weird choice for Christmas Day, but that’s the way it landed. Merry Christmas.

El-P and his label, Definitive Jux, had a great run in the 2000s. At this point, he wasn’t far away from shuttering it (I’ve never investigated the reasons why). A production gig on Killer Mike’s R.A.P. Music record lead to the two forming Run The Jewels, who have had an outsize effect on the world of hip hop.

But that’s all biography. It doesn’t change the intense but still fun statement we get from the last (at the moment) El-P solo joint.

The beats are dense. Like, really dense. Not far from industrial noise in a lot of places, and full of perfectly placed samples that few producers would be able to line up. El’s rhymes are acerbic, angry, witty, and methodical. Still, he relays exactly what he wants you to feel, even if you can’t always comprehend why.

When the music isn’t industrial sounding, it’s blaring old school NYC hip hop vibes, complete with record scratches and BAPs (the compressed snare hit half of “boom bap” idk what you call em).

Tracks I Liked

Tasmanian Pain Coaster - a great lyric, and (I think) the transforming sound from the Transformers cartoon thrown into the mix at the end.

Up All Night - “I might have been born yesterday but I stayed up all night” is a phrase I still use regularly to this day.

Dear Sirs - don’t get tricked into thinking that El wasn’t politically aware before Run The Jewels