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I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead | El-P
Definitive Jux | March 20th

Review by Scotland

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Sounds like … Hip-Hop without the marketing team

Aside from Hell Hath No Fury by The Clipse, some Dilla re-releases, and perhaps Security Screenings by Prefuse 73, the overall concentration of Hip-Hop in the 2006 release mix seemed to have been heavily diluted by a slurry of mediocrity. Fortunately for the heads out there, it seems that the tipping point has been reached in 2007, heralding the return of dense, intelligent, powerful Hip-Hop in the guise of the new El-P record, I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead (ISWYD).

From the seven-minute opening track it’s clear that ISWYD is going to be an intense ride, musically and lyrically deep, and breathtakingly ambitious. A Twin Peaks reference sets the tone for the rest of the album - a Lynch-inspired haunting realism lurking just below the façade of city living. With urgent guitar work by the Mars Volta and the desperate refrain “the whole design got my mind cryin’ and if I’m lyin’ I’m dyin’, shit” the track TPC, like the album it introduces, marches definitively to its own immensely powerful broken beat.

El-Producto took five years to craft this album, time well spent considering how listenable such a musically complex record is. Elements of experimental jazz find their way into the mix (Smithereens) and syncopated snare loops provide the sonic backdrop for venomous rebukes like “I might have been born yesterday Sir, but I stayed up all night” (Up All Night). The funk-inflected minimalism of EMG merges into the rock-fusion of Drive, with El-P’s darkly opaque rhymes covering war, drugs, secular religion, and fear of flying amongst other things.

By the time Cat Power helps flip the meaning of the album’s title from menacing threat to bitter rebuke on Poisonville Kids No Wins, the damage has been done. Make no mistake about it, Hip-Hop needed this album, and so do you.

9 out of 10