Our Interview With El-P

I can't stress to you, Syffal reader person, how much of a big deal this interview was for me. El-P has been one of my favorite artists since college. My old homey Avid put me onto to Funcrusher Plus and honestly I never looked back. I've been stuck on underground, alternative, indie, whatever-you-fucking-call-it hip hop ever since. El-P's record label Definitive Jux became, if not the backbone, like a good couple of vertebrae, in bringing fresh influences, technology, and progression to the rap genre. Since the labels demise, El-P has managed to find new ways to stay relevant and to keep surprising the shit out of his fans by pulling musical chess moves to make Magnus Carlsen take up Connect Four. He put out a new record last year called Cancer4Cure, and produced Killer Mike's classic record, R.A.P. Music. And now, as Run the Jewels, El and Mike have put a whole new generation onto that rugged like Ruwanda steez.

To be given the opportunity, through Red Bull and their Sound Select Stage, to have a sit-down interview with El-P was something I couldn't pass up. So without even enough money in my pocket to buy a drink, I headed out to West Hollywood to find El-P at the Troubadour.

I didn't prepare anything. For once, I didn't need to do homework. I knew what I wanted to ask. It was like finally meeting someone who I feel like I know intimately. I realize that El-P had no idea who the Fuck I was but that mattered little. I was totally ready. That does not mean that I wasn't a nervous fucking wreck.

I was joined on this mission by concert photographer and femininja, Beth. After hanging outside in the front bar for a while, fidgeting aimlessly, trying to focus on the music being piped into the bar by the warm-up DJ in the main room, and taking several anxious smoke breaks, Beth and I were finally invited upstairs before the show. We popped into a small dark room and took a seat on the couch. The room was filled with people devouring pasta in various forms from the upscale Italian joint next door.

El-P realized pretty quickly that I was from Syffal, and warmed up. I mistook Wilder Zoby for Blockhead for a second. It was dark and I was kind of freaking out. We were also joined by Torbitt Schwartz aka Litter Shalimar of Chin Chin and Shannon T. Moore of the punk-hardcore group, Activator. (All of whom request Syffal shirts!) The other's pretty quickly retreated to less formal digs as I began recording our conversation, but not before:

Our interview with El-P starts NOW!

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Wilder Zoby: I was standing in the waiting area at Dan Tana's and these three girls started talking about how they all discovered that they just had STDs.

SYFFAL: Oh, what?

Beth: Oh, that's awkward.

Wilder Zoby: I was, like, right there.

SYFFAL: That's where you're like you secretly record.. "World Star Hip Hop".

El-P: (faking like he's socking Wilder) WORLD STAR!

Wilder Zoby: They kind of all made eye contact with me when they walked in.

Beth: So they know you're standing there.

Wilder Zoby: They knew I was standing right there.

El-P: They just wanted you to know they were down. They were fucking with you.
They were like, "Let's do it."

(laughter)

Should we do it tonight? Yes!
Should we do the routine?

Beth: Make this guy as uncomfortable as possible.

Wilder Zoby: It was really… (trails off)

El-P: That would actually make a brilliant sort of blooper reel.

Beth: Candid Camera.

Wilder Zoby: (seeming to maybe show some actual concern) She was like, "I cried for two days."

El-P: (without any regard for said concern) And weirdly enough, my boyfriend cried for three days.

(laughter)

SYFFAL: There's an LA blog that does like a weekly post on Overheard in LA. You know, like, "My dog's yoga class was sold out." That story would be perfect.

El-P: Um, you guys want to do this shit?

SYFFAL: Yeah, so Alaska says whats up?

He was, like, shooting me advice… like EL's gonna beat you up, fool!

(laughter)

Wilder Zoby: Tell him Wilder says, Fuck you.

SYFFAL: I will. So, I didn't prepare anything.

El-P: Congratulations.

SYFFAL: You know how we do over here.

But I always wondered this: Is it weird that to chubby 30-year-old blogger types… You're like my Taylor Swift, fool.

El-P: It's weird that I don't get the analogy.

(laughter)

SYFFAL: Okay, so, you're my Justin Beiber, fool. Like, fanboy shit.
I fucking love you.
I've been a fan for a long fucking time.

El-P: Thank you. It' s much cooler than not having fans.

SYFFAL: I guess that's true.

El-P: It would be much weirder if I was doing this show and I didn't have fans.

SYFFAL: Like most of the people I make music with.

El-P: What's weird is that there are 16-year-olds that are..

SYFFAL: Into it, huh?

El-P: It's weird, after we've been around for a minute, you have waves of new fans, you know because a lot of people don't even know my shit. They just know Run the Jewels shit.

SYFFAL: With Killer Mike, that whole shit. Fuck, man. That album is sick.

Well, that was my next thing:
So, it's been like three waves, really, as far as I see it, and maybe you could correct me if I'm wrong. Okay, so with Len and Jus and Company Flow, when I first ever heard you.

El-P: Wave one, yeah.

SYFFAL: Wave two is of course the whole Def Jux thing, right? Wave three is this whole new thing?

El-P: Yeah.

SYFFAL: Which one has been the most rewarding for you? Like, which one…
Obviously right now is awesome, but do you look back and think, oh, there's something I would have done differently or which one holds the most, like… ugh!

El-P: Well, I mean, you know, I honestly, I don't really think about it like that. None of them could have existed without the other one. They were all really important to me. And yet at the same time, I don't take much time to reminisce or to pontificate on my past much, and I think mostly because I have this idea in the back of my head that when you start doing that, that's sort of the beginning of the end. When you start quantifying and measuring, like, where you've been or what it meant or…

It almost feels like you are starting to see the end of your sort of path.

I don't feel like I've…

SYFFAL: You feel like there's maybe a fourth wave.

El-P: Absolutely, and you got to understand, I mean, the second wave lasted ten years.

And I do feel like I'm on the precipice of… I do feel like I've started… a new (thing).
And I'm very grateful for it, but I feel like I have a new foot into something.

SYFFAL: Was there a moment before this incarnation right now where you weren't sure if there'd be a new one?

El-P: Yes! A few times! When Company Flow broke up, I was terrified. I didn't know what I was gonna do because I had no intentions of being a solo act. I wanted Company Flow to be the thing I did forever, you know, when I was a kid.

I hadn't made any plans for anything else because I enjoyed being in it with other people and the camaraderie and I enjoyed sharing the blame.

And soo I reluctantly got into the mind state of, like, well alright seeing what songs made by me about me are… Once I got rid of the fear things opened up and all of a sudden I was a solo artist and it was a real thing and that fear was negated, but I mean when Def Jux shut down, I didn't know.

Like even when I was making Cancer4Cure-you can ask Torbitt over there-for the first time in my life with Cancer4Cure, making that shit, I was consciously thinking to myself this could be the end of my career. Like this could really be it.

SYFFAL: Because if you put it out and it gets no love?

El-P: If I put it out and it gets no love this could be the…the…

SYFFAL: The swan song?

El-P: The farts. The slow, wheezing fart of my story.

SYFFAL: Next thing you know you're in a gold fucking jumpsuit in vegas. El-P's lounge act!

El-P: Or something far less lucrative than that. But, yea, I was a little bit lost at that time. I didn't know what was gonna happen. And especially because I'd come out of a pretty tough time and it was hard for me. It was hard for me to get started. I had friends pass away, big life shifts, I had lost all my money. I was really starting again and didn't know what that was gonna be. I was worried about it to a degree and I tried to suppress it as much as I could. But then I'd turn to someone and be like, I could be fucked here man.

But that didn't happen. You have to have those come to Jesus moments every one in a while if you're going to have a long career. If you going to do the longevity thing-which I'm fucking hell bent on doing-you're going to confront yourself a few times.

Because of the inevitability of that I don't choose to think too much about myself and where I've been and what it means or where I'm going. Because I know that eventually it's just gonna come to me whether I want it or not. I'm going to have that moment regardless. In the mean time it can cripple you.

Thinking about that is not really the most creative inspiring headspace, so I just try to keep it in music.

SYFFAL: Do you feel like Cancer4Cure has measured up to Funcrusher, or Fantastic Damage? At this point, it's the legend of Co Flow vs. the legacy of Def Jux, and now this new thing. I mean you've said you weren't positive that it was going to be well-received.

El-P: Look all I'm trying to do is make records, man. I don't have too much of a perspective.

SYFFAL: But, now that it has (been well-received) by like Redbull and people and all that.

El-P: You know for me as a person, as an artist and an individual, it's nice to know that what I'm doing artistically isn't tied into my legacy. I made this record in a bubble. It was outside of the Co Flow/Def Jux legacy. It was now a new start. It couldn't been one thing. It couldn't been another. And luckily it was received really well. For me that was very validating, for sure. You wish you weren't sensitive to the reception of your record.

SYFFAL: It's your baby?

El-P: It's your career and you have to deal with it. No matter the case. I just feel so excited to be doing what I love doing.

SYFFAL: The reason I've been a fan of yours for so long is that ability to make a left and do whatever the Fuck you want to do regardless of what everybody else says or does.

El-P: Thank you.

SYFFAL: Personally, where does that big fucking middle finger, that image when I first pulled the CD out of the tray on Funcrusher Plus, "Independent as Fuck", for you, where does that come from?

El-P: I got kicked out of every high school I ever went to. Instead of finishing high school I went to musical engineering school at 16. I lied about my age to get in to it.

SYFFAL: Ha! Nice.

El-P: I mean the "Fuck you" comes from being hurt as a kid, being abandoned as a kid, feeling angry. And also having a few early victories.

The first big departure from the norm for me, was deciding to not try to keep going to high school. And that was probably the biggest and most important decision I've ever made in my life.
And that's a pretty big fucking decision.

When you're like ok, I've gotten kicked out of two high school in the same year, I gotta do this. That would have completely changed my life. I don't think there would have been any records if that hadn't happened.

SYFFAL: I see what your saying: Like, that "oh shit" moment of I'm going to leave that security to chase this thing is the same…

El-P: Well I learned early that I didn't give a Fuck. I wasn't trying to hear "no". I wasn't trying to ask permission and that wasn't something I knew until that happened. And quite honestly I haven't ever had a bad experience following my heart and doing the thing that is pure to me and doing the things that I'm passionate about or that I that felt is right.

I've only ever had bad experiences when I've tried to negotiate the terrain that has been laid out in front of me, bumpy or not, that people are familiar with and have said you need to walk this way. I've only have problems when I've attempted to do that. So maybe at this point I have a twisted perspective...

SYFFAL: Probably.

El-P: Because for me, it's like: so you mean if I just reverse the rules then I'll be happy? That's not always the case for most people. For me, it just happened to form my personality. You kind of have to be a little fucking crazy, and a little bit obstinate, and just ferocious to even do that. And it doesn't necessarily mean you have sanity, or that you're going to have the easiest time of life.

SYFFAL: Alright, production-wise, you made a name for yourself with Cold Vein (Cannibal Ox). I mean the new Killer Mike shit is fucking bonkers. That's a tandem I don't think anybody saw coming. I mean I'm from New Orleans and was a big Killer Mike/Dirty South fan and I definitely didn't see that coming. I'm not going to ask you about the genesis of all that because I've heard you talk about it before, but just in terms of production. Does the production hold an equal place for you versus the emceeing, the rapping, the lyrical stuff. Are they equal to you?

El-P: They are equal to me in a lot of ways.

(At this point the Redbull PR person who facilitated the interview came in to let me know I'd run out of time. And after confirming I was the last press visitor, El-P told her I could kick it, since he's friends with the owner of SYFFAL. So, thanks Tim. I love you, boo!)

The interview continues:

El-P: Production is something I'll be doing when I'm 50. I not going to be rapping when I'm 50 and that's just a fucking fact.

SYFFAL: I'm a teacher and I feel the same way. I won't be doing this when I'm 50. The cool guy routine will eventually wear out.

El-P: Music is something that is sort of there, always, and lyrics are something that's a tool that are there when I sit down to make that happen, when I have an idea about that, I write, you know? It's hard to say, you know? But the fact of the matter is, I was a rapper first, and I just learned how to make beats so I could rap.

SYFFAL: So the beats came out of just needing something to rap over?

El-P: Exactly!

SYFFAL: So Fuck chasing down beats?

El-P: I didn't know how! I was fucking 12 years old! Just a kid making beats in my room. I guess I made music for ten years before anybody heard my music. And it wasn't good. It was terrible but I had that time alone to figure that out. I had that time to be bad.

SYFFAL: I feel like some people who get that success right away, it's a disservice to them and their ability to mature and grow.

El-P: Well, some people are just way much more fucking talented than I was. You know? I had to fucking figure out how to be dope. And I'm still figuring out. That's what fun about it to me.

SYFFAL: In a way if you had that success, it might have stunted you though? But because you were able to marinate and actually figure it out?

El-P: If I had even had that artistic success. I guess that's the thing that keeps me going and doing it. I have literally never thought there wasn't something else to do. I has never occurred to me that I was finished or that what I was able to do was this. I don't look at what I'm doing now and think that's what I'm going to be doing in ten years.

I think if anything: maybe that's the mind state I've kept myself in so that I'm sure to have something to offer longer than for short bursts.

SYFFAL: Why do record labels hate you?

El-P: (looks at me cross)

SYFFAL: Or do they? So like Rawkus, that whole, "I'd rather be mouth-fucked my Nazi's unconscious."

El-P: Wasn't that me hating the record labels?

SYFFAL: Well I thought you hated that that they wouldn't let you do what you were trying to do. (trying to save my question)

El-P: Nah nah nah… but ok, keep going.

SYFFAL: I guess the question is…well, the next thing is that Def Jux comes along as an alternative to that situation, and then got sued by Def Jam.

El-P: Well early in the game we got sued by Def Jam because they were looking at a label called Def Jux and the scans and we were fucking selling records.

SYFFAL: So did you understand where they were coming from or were you like Fuck that.

El-P: Of course! No, I understood. I mean I laughed about it and it was just a little thing. But the Rawkus thing was just: you have to understand, man, that same "Fuck you" attitude that I needed to survive as a kid of like a broken home-I mean there was drama in my fucking life as a kid-

SYFFAL: "Stepfather Factory", yo!

El-P: I grew that personality and couple that with youth and hubris and arrogance and all the good things that comes with youth that you need to step out into this grinding fucking slaying machine of a world and actually do something. You need that shit to cut though. You need that arrogance.

SYFFAL: So you don't see yourself as opposed to the establishment.

El-P: There is no rule to me about anything except as long as I'm doing what I want to do then we'll work on the rest. My perspective changes throughout the years on different situations.

I look back on the Rawkus situation and I'm like I don't have the same anger that I had as when I was 21. Because, I then subsequently ran a label for ten years. And I was like OH! this isn't that easy. This is pretty fucking hard!

So, obviously, my perspective changed a little bit. But my thing is that I was never good at dealing with scenarios in which I was compromising or where I felt like I was trying to fight or explain. The reason that I created Def Jux is that I wanted to know for a fact that everybody around me was 100% down. That was sort of the way I looked at it then. I'm not gonna go up into Rawkus and try to explain why shit needed to be… well, Fuck, that was then, you know?

And now I don't know what I even fucking think. I just know that I kind of have to exist on the fringes of this shit because I can't really get down with the industry in the traditional sense. I never could. I don't want to wait. I don't want to talk. I just want to do what I want to do. And I didn't want it to be something other than what it was.

And then when it became something other than what it was or what I wanted it to be, I shut it down. I felt like I wasn't fulfilling the promise and wasn't being of any use to the people who followed me into this. I outlasted my use for them. So keeping it around was in fact a disservice to everyone who put their careers in my hands.

SYFFAL: You cultivated a stable of people, but a lot of the people that were on that label, it wasn't like Def Jux ended and all those people just went away.

El-P: Right.

SYFFAL: They all went on to do different shit too.

El-P: Exactly.

And now, if you ask me about it, the way I look at a label is great, fine, but if you grow up wanting to run a record label, fine. I didn't. I wanted to make music.

SYFFAL: (So Def Jux) was a means to an end?

El-P: Yea. But I wanted to do something positive and work with people and give back a little bit as best I could but I don't think the label is as important as the artist or the music, once the label became this monster that had to be fed, as opposed to this mechanism for the purpose of helping out and purveying the music that needed to be made, is when I started to question it and wasn't sure I was flourishing in that environment any more and so that was that. And ask me again in a couple of years and I'll probably give you another answer.

SYFFAL: I will.

Ok, "Drones over Brooklyn". I think of Ray Bradbury and Isaac Asimoov, and science fiction writers being able to, not predict, but see into the future shit. Then we hear "Drones over Brooklyn," and a few months later there are actual fucking drones over actual fucking Brooklyn. We were laughing, like, maybe he made that song about Amazon. That paranoia, that dystopian vision thing that you've become known for, is that something conscious or just how you're wired?

El-P: It's not paranoia. It's logic. Science fiction is logic. I've said this before: it doesn't take a genius to see that big, clunky computer that only runs at a certain speed will eventually become a thin, sleek computer that runs at triple the speed. That just is logic. I also happen to be wired a certain way because at some point early in my life, because of what I read or because maybe of some sort of weird fever I must have had, some veil had become lifted off my face and I saw things in a certain way. It wasn't a particularly happy vision or something I was excited about. It was just a little bit of this insanity, this wave of truth that hit me and never stopped. It always seemed to be there. What I saw as truth didn't match up to what was being told as truth. And I still feel that way and once you feel that way, once you see things in that way, it's hard to unsee it. You have to work really fucking hard.

SYFFAL: Do you like it?

El-P: No. That's what I'm saying, and I've said it before. Me being right is terrible. The thing I don't understand is why people would think it's science fiction. If we have drones in Afghanistan.

SYFFAL: (rhetorically) Why can't they be here?

El-P: It's not science fiction. I just feel people have to go further out of their way into their own minds to create a world where that's isolated than for me to create a world in which it's not. I don't think I'm the one who is stretching his imagination here. I feel like it's everyone else who is holding up this facade, this hologram of this reality that we're existing in (that is NOT accurate) is a lot of work. It's a lot of work for the average mind to ignore reality.

And once you see reality, it's not really work.

It's not like I want to seem arrogant like I see reality and you don't, it's more like I do have a particular perspective that's like just put two and two together. That's all. I argue with people a little bit when they say I'm science fiction because I'm not talking about UFOs or other planets with different cultures. I'm just talking about what I see now because I'm a writer. I'm tying it into my reality. I'm certainly not like the most prophetic dude in the world. I don't look at it like that. People were like, "Look, there really are drones!"

SYFFAL: Yea!

El-P: Yea, well, it'd be like saying, "boats in the harbor". It's like look I went to this other country and I saw fucking boats in the harbor. So I'm going to write a song called "Boats in my Harbor," because there's probably going to be boats in my fucking harbor. How can there not be?

SYFFAL: (laughing) Good point.

El-P: You don't uninvent the drone you know. And that's the thing. The technology doesn't get uninvented. And power doesn't get reversed.

SYFFAL: There are just more uses for it.

El-P: It has to be torn down. It has be destroyed or lost, but it doesn't get reversed. If anything is happening on this planet, it's happening everywhere on this planet. And that's it.

SYFFAL: OK, help me be able to blackmail Alaska.

El-P: (laughs) him and Breeze (Windnbreeze of Hangar 18), we used to call them the twins, which, if you know Alaska and Breeze, you know they are clearly NOT twins. But they used to work in tandem. I took them on the "I'll Sleep When You're Dead" tour and they were just the most scandalous, wretched mother fuckers I've ever met in my life. We were so alcoholic on that tour we would straight up have shirtless fist fights on the bus.

SYFFAL: Nice

El-P: Like laughing hysterically and slamming…I mean Alaksa a strong guy. He's a big dude. And at one point he was a fucking huge dude.

SYFFAL: I call him Fat Joe because, you know, Fat Joe is now very skinny Joe. He's like Little Alaska now.

El-P: Yea, we used to just like clothesline each other in a drunken stupor, but like him and Breeze would do fucked up shit man. They were just grimy.

SYFFAL: Tim can be such an asshole but I love him to fucking death.

El-P: Alaska's the best.

SYFFAL: He's got that like way he does things. How he runs Syffal. The fucking shit has to be how it has to be but it has to be that way because it's the right fucking way to do it.

El-P: And Alaska is someone I'd listen to because he's a genuinely good mother fucker and had a perspective and isn't full of himself and I thought he made great records. I was excited to put him out on Def Jux. That's my dude.

SYFFAL: Thanks for taking the time, El.

At this point, El-P and I posed for some pics and Beth and I saw our way out. Little did I know I was in store for a secret Run the Jewels set with surprise guest Killer Mike. It turned out to be one of the best shows I'd been to in a minute. And a big thank you goes out to El-P, and Red Bull's Sound Select Stage for invited me out and giving me this opportunity. I am very grateful and promise to only play with my balls left-handed when I think about you all.