El-P

After a five year break, El-P is back for another round of post-apocalyptic dread. The production here is more melodious than on previous album, Fantastic Damage, but it's only a matter of degrees; tracks like "Tasmanian Pain Coaster" and "Drive" feature waves of cacophony breaking against jittery rhythms. Lyrically, El-P focuses on the conceptual. On the beautifully twisted "Habeas Corpus," he assumes the persona of a futuristic slave executioner who has fallen in love with his subject. It's jarring and perfectly realized.

Smart, intense and more underground than a sewage line, El-P (a.k.a. El-Producto) is the
face of independent rap -- one version of it, anyway. Like most of his catalog, I'll Sleep
When You're Dead sounds like a hip-hop version of a Philip K. Dick novel, all mysterious,
dystopian beat poetry. El-P's rhymes are fierce and sometimes cryptic, and "Drive" offers
something like a thesis statement: "My generation is carpoolin' with doom and dis... More >