I'll Sleep When You're Dead by El-P
1 rating since posting on Thursday, April 5, 2007
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I’ve listened to this new release from El-P about a dozen times since Tuesday (which, yes, means 4 times a day). Much like his 2002 masterpiece, “Fantastic Damage,” this is one of those records you will either absolutely love or completely hate and dismiss as emo, pseudo-intellectual garbage. There’s no middle ground. I’m definitely of the former camp. I really will have to cut down on repeated listens shortly or it will very likely influence my writing. That’s fine as a small part of the multiple aspects of my life that shape my own music, but geesh, I would never want somebody to hear a song of mine and think, “Oh, he’s trying to sound like El-P.” And it is absolutely, positively one of those albums that can poison another writer’s pen. Featuring collaborations with The Mars Volta and Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor, “I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead” makes for a refreshing change from what most people think when it comes to Hip Hop. Yes, the beats and bragging are there, but the musical landscape and lyrical content take the listener through a post-Apocalyptic dystopia, which addresses the near future and the ever stress inducing now. “C’mon mom/ can I borrow the keys?/ My generation is car pooling with doom and disease/….cars slide by with the boomin’ system/ like New York is Fallujah with metal gear using Christians/ posted up for the gods of oil mining/ in a military humvee with no bulletproof siding (sorry fellas)….this gonzomatic fear turns me Hunter S. Thompson/ with my lawyer leaning over the side view mirror vomiting” – El-P, Drive This is not background music. This is not something you throw on to just relax or dance to (and if one were to dance or chill out to this album I’d question what they were smoking). There was a definite change in the music El-P has recorded since 9/11. This isn’t to say that his work in the 90s with Company Flow isn’t worth checking for, but his music from the last century doesn’t carry the same impact. The wordplay and musical accompaniment are so much more carefully chosen to set the mood and keep the mind in motion. This is not the disposable art that most rap music has been these days. From my own experiences since Katrina, I can definitely relate to his latest offering. “I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead” will very likely be in my top 5 favorite recordings of 2007. Just hope I don’t have to wait another five years for the next El-P solo album. - Brian , posted 04/05/07 |
I'll Sleep When You're Dead by El-P was recommended for:
- Tribe: Hip Hop
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- Tribe: The Physics of Hip Hop
- Tribe: Definitive Jux
- Tribe: Underground Hip Hop