Shabooty Interview Series: El-P (2009)

Shabooty Interview Series: El-P (2009)

It has been over two years since my first interview with CEO, rapper, and producer El-P. Cloudy disposition rap needs a Mozart, and El-P brings that chance of golf ball sized hail. But this interview did not turn dystopic. El-P and I discuss the finer things I life like: failing hard drives, Aborigines, gym class collaborations and more.

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Hi El, your label mate Aesop Rock’s work ethic has been crazy lately, how does he do it?
Aes is just a really intense guy. He’s like a workaholic. I don’t know too many people that work as much as Aes does. He sits in the studio and makes shit all the time. Sometimes, I’m very envious of how much time he puts into his shit, ’cause I find myself going months without being able do something, then I sit down and go through huge bursts of time where that’s all I do, but yeah Aes, he’s def. an official workaholic.

What’s Def Jux’s relationship with Strange Famous Records?
We don’t really have a relationship with the record label. I mean, I’m cool with Sage [Francis], I kinda got to know him a little bit over the last couple years just doing a few shows together and he’s a cool guy. I’m bringing one of his acts on this little tour that we’re doing, B. Dolan. They seem like really good guys, ya know? And we’ve kinda always floated around the scene together, but for the first time in the last couple years, I felt like friends of mine were doing tours with Sage, and different things, and so we just kind of started to get to know each other a little bit. So yeah, just more like a mutual respect thing I guess.

Is it cool or lame to be on a ticket with Animal Collective? Are you a fan or not?
I dunno about cool or lame. I don’t really know. That’s probably good. It’s probably a good look for someone. I mean, Animal Collective does really well. I guess it depends on the way you think about your music. I’m pretty sure that anyone who’s going on tour with anyone, thinks it’s cool. I personally don’t judge it like that. I’ve heard some of their stuff, I think it’s pretty cool, ya know? I don’t like buy their albums, but I’ve heard it and I think it’s good stuff, interesting stuff. I mean, my perspective is usually like, it’s cool to mix shit up. I think a lot of times in the music industry, when you start to meet musicians from other genres, and you start to – you know when you’re just a kid, and you’re just a fan and obsessed with your music and your genre, you have like a much more hardcore stance. You think that you have a hardcore stance, then you start to get out there a little bit and you start to realize that all those musicians are really just – a lot of them are cool people that have their own thing going on and they’re not like pretentious or not like – ya know, you start to realize it’s not that easy. Everyone’s just kinda trying to do the same thing, so if I were in a position where getting a spot on their tour was gonna be a good thing, I would take it, you know. I don’t have any “cool or not cool” policies.

What’s the next Def Jux Records release after Def Jux Presents 4?
The Camu [Tao] record, and we’re just trying to figure out when exactly we’re gonna put it out. I mean initially, I was gonna try and put it out in October, but with the Cage record and with the Def Jux Presents record taking up a lot of our time, I kind of started to feel like we needed more time to set the record up, and it’s such a special record for a lot of reasons to me and to everyone involved, that I’m trying to figure out when to do it. It will either be in November, or in the top of next year. But that will the next bigger ticket release.

How’s Def Jux “West” doing?
Def Jux West… you mean Jay? You mean our one employee that decided he wanted to live on the west coast? He’s chilling. I mean you know it doesn’t really change anything to me. I mean, he’s on IM still, so it’s like the modern office these days. I don’t fucking go to our office. I’ve literally only been to the new Def Jux office two times in the last year. So, I mean I think that it’s just a testament to the way that things are going that people can be working on different coasts, and it’s kinda the same shit.

How was that recent Australia tour?
That was cool man, that Australian tour was really cool. I hadn’t been out there in like six years or something and it was just dope man. I really like Australia. It’s kind of one of those places and you immediately start fantasizing about not going home, it’s just so far away and it just seems like such a different world. But, then you realize it’s just like a desert surrounded by sharks. And then you realize it’s like a hundred degrees.

And then there’s that token Aborigine?
And then there’s like one Aborigine on the corner, like left over from the massive slaughter, not to say that that’s much different from a lot of other countries. But, I really like Australia, I really like touring in Australia, but it’s hard to get out there because it’s costly. It can cost you like fifteen grand or more, to about twenty grand or so, just to get everybody the fuck out there. So, but I was really happy to do that tour. The shows were really good and hopefully when the next record comes out, I’ll probably try to go there sooner in the whole record cycle, because it was sort of like doing a tour years after the record came out, it was a little weird.

When’s the last time you’ve heard from Shia LaBeouf?
I mean I probably heard from him the last time I was around Cage, when he called Cage. I just hear that he’s working hard on his new movie, and Shia is Shia, ya know? The last time I saw him was in LA, I flew out to go see the Cage show in LA, and we all got a chance to hang out.

I saw you’re boys with Trav [of Gym Class Heroes], and you’re working on an album together. How did that go down?
Yeah, me and Trav are good friends and we kinda decided to just do something for fun basically. I think what we’re gonna do is basically like an EP of just us bugging out basically, and just do like five or six or seven songs, and probably give it away free with like a t-shirt. Something like that, we just wanted to do something, it’s just one of those things where we’re just sitting around talking about music and shit, and we just thought it’d be fun to whip something together that didn’t have to do with all of our careers. That’s like the beauty of doing a side project or something ya know you don’t have to think that much about it, you can just kinda do some shit, and if it sounds cool then maybe just throw it out there, and you don’t have to like worry about promotion or worry about what it means to your career and shit, ya know? And I think that it’s fun for me to get together every once and a while with people I like hanging out with and fuck around with some music. It kinda keeps it fresh for me. So, we should be working on that. We already kinda started working on it a little bit, but he just moved out to Miami and so I’m supposed to be doing a joint with him for his solo record, so I’m not sure the time line.

It makes it less laborious to do a side project, it just makes it kinda fun?
Yeah, I mean when I do my records, I take the shit so seriously, that I almost fucking kill myself. It’s probably not the greatest approach in the world, but I can’t help it because when you make a record once every four years, you want it to be the best, or it’s just intense. There’s a lot that comes with that idea, but just getting together with some friends and making some songs, that’s easy, that’s fun.

Kind of like that “We Are All Going To Hell Mega Mix,” I think you meant to do it for fun, but then you put your normal work ethic into it, right?
The “We Are All Going To Burn In Hell Mega Mix” – esp. the second one, which was all original material. Well, the first one was more of a mixtape, but still based on original material, stuff I had, but a lot of what that is, is just an exorcism of all of the random shit that I just work on, and random beats that kind of end up not finding a home or not going anywhere or not being evolved into album cuts or things like that. And I just have done them, and they’re just there, and you keep checking on them. For me, after a while, if a piece of music doesn’t evolve into something, it almost is impossible for me to do anything with it, it just sort of will sit there, and so, I just thought it’d be kinda cool to turn that one mixtape into a series, and kinda make it a little more about random production and shit that I do in my spare time. And also, it gave me the chance to throw some remixes on there. A couple of them that were never approved, or cleared, and a couple of them that were, that maybe people didn’t hear. But, that was fun for me, because I kind of like – it’s more of a raw thing, this isn’t the polished, but I did put some effort into it, in terms of presenting it and making it cohesive, and going in and touching up what I had started, and once I put it into an album context, like, okay, now I just need to… this isn’t going to be a song with me rapping on it, this is gonna be an instrumental, so I know what to do now. And there were also some random verses and things that I had demoed up and recorded and shit, that I just couldn’t ever really finish, or put anywhere, and I was overflowing with sort of ideas, and it was so long since I had put any material out, that I was just kind of excited about just putting a bunch of shit out, and I didn’t really care about putting it out on a record label, or anything like that, I just wanted it to just be out. I thought it was cool when you have artists, where you had some little gem that was rare, but still worked on, and was cohesive, but also it’s like, “hey, its a mixtape, so it doesn’t have to sound that good.” Which is cool to me. So, people listen with a different ear. People are like, “that snare was mixed…I woulda mixed the snare differently,” it’s like, “nah, actually it’s just not mixed,” so there’s no complaining about that.

Jeff Weiss (LATimes), has your Megamix on his top 10 albums of the year list on his blog, (The Passion of the Weiss)
Yeah, I read that. He was like one of the only dudes to do like a real review of it. He said some really nice things about it, I like that guy’s blog.

Your ex-girlfriend called in on that mixtape and talked shit?
Yeah, I asked her to. I was just like, I need you to do a drop for my mixtape, and say whatever the fuck you want to say, but I thought it was pretty funny. I’m still friends with her, so…

It wasn’t an old recording?
Nah, I mean she mentioned the “megamix.”

Lol, true. Talk about that hard drive crash, what happened? It sounded dire.
Yeah, I had a scare about about five months ago or something. I had a legitimate hard drive scare that sent me in a damn near suicidal tizzy for about three days. Because those motherfuckers at Techserve are scoundrels, and grifters, and they basically just told me that it was dead, and that the only way for me to save it, was to spend 5,000 dollars on this one company that they knew of in California, and that, “Oh by the way, here’s your 20% rebate that we can give you.” I was like wait a second, this seems a little strange. It seems a bit fishy, so I just went the extra mile to go find someone who, long story short, after about a couple of weeks, I got my shit back. It was pretty much everything that I have for my next record that had been started, and was turning into something, and then all of a sudden it was like GONE. And I just felt really really horrified. It was like someone had just like… it was kinda like walking home, coming home to your apartment, and realizing the locks had been changed. But all my shit’s in the apartment, and they’re like, “Yeah, sorry, you don’t live here anymore.”

And the locksmith’s in Cali…
And the locksmith’s in Cali, and it’s gonna cost you $5000 dollars. But, nah, it’s all good, ya know, it happens, but now my system is fucking …it’s like a digital Fort Knox. There’s no God damn way I’m gonna lose anything.

You have multiple back-ups?
Oh, yeah. It’s rediculous, yeah.

Yeah, my Iomega died a few weeks after yours.
First of all, you can’t fuck with Lacie drives, too much. That’s the common shit people use, Lacie drives, people use Sea[gate] drives, whatever, they’re no good, man. You gotta get like a Glyph or some shit. Anyway, that’s just nerd technical talk now.
I think nerds will be interested!

Were you on the wagon, recently?
I was on the wagon. I was on the wagon, I had decided I was gonna go on the wagon. I went on the wagon for a little over – no, actually, exactly one month. I mean, I’m a fucking – I’ve got that demon in me, that demon in me who likes to self medicate, who has seen… I used to be fine in my twenties, right when I got around thirty, I started to realize I was feeling a lot of – I was apologizing a lot, and it started to get to the point where I was apologizing just instinctively, just assuming I had said or done something wrong the night before, that I didn’t remember. I don’t like embarrassing myself, but I have a tendency to do that when I’m really drunk, so I think I just sort of said the wrong thing, this is really just my shit. I said something that I wish I hadn’t said or something some weird… and the next day, I was like that’s it, fuck it, I have to, it’s either I’ve gotta quit drinking 100%, and my mother and my a lot of people in my family …it was either I’ve gotta quit drinking forever, and go to AA meetings, and admit I’m an alcoholic, and I can’t control myself, or let me see if I can control myself, and it was interesting. I have no problem even saying it, because I come from that – like my mother is an alcoholic, her mother died of alcoholism, her mother’s sister died of alcoholism, I mean my mother’s mother drank herself to death in a hotel room, the dog starved, and jumped out the balcony of the hotel room. I’ve got a long linage of really problematic alcoholism in my family, so I’m susceptible to that shit. I’m kinda crazy with that shit. Sometimes, I’ll go long periods of times without doing anything, and then, I’ll go out and going fucking crazy. And you know it’s just one of those things, do you want to be the type of person that learns moderation and can deal with it, or do you want to be the type of person that… to me, sometimes doing the extreme of like, alright, I’m quitting drinking, I’m crazy, I’m insane, I’m drinking, I’m doing drugs, I’m all over the place, then directly into like I’m 100% clean. I’m not doing any of that shit, to me it’s almost like two, it’s almost like mirror images of the same problem. Ya know, it’s like an extremism that exists within you, that doesn’t hint at moderation in anyway. There’s no other tones except really loud or really quiet, and even in sobriety, it could be like a violent sobriety, it can be a loud sobriety, in the sense that it’s an extreme decision, and I’m the type of person that does that type of thing, so it was interesting to not drink for that long, and it fucked me up. It made me tired, it made me cranky, and I don’t think some of my friends around me really could get that, ya know, ’cause they weren’t going through it, and I tried to hide it, ’cause about two weeks in, I was like, shit, this is actually kinda hard. I can’t remember the last time I haven’t spent a week without drinking, and it kinda changed me. Like, I haven’t really gone out much, it has changed my schedule, I’m up at 7 am, I go to bed at like 11 pm. That’s late, sometimes it’s weird, something weird is happening. Everything is pushing me towards kinda like chilling out, and working right now, so I’m sure that once I go back on the road, I’m gonna become a raging idiot, again.

When you perform, do you perform sober or drunk?
I mean, I’ll put it to you this way, I don’t perform drunk. On occasion, I have and it has usually been in those moments where you’re on tour, and you’re in some fucking back water town, and they’re like eighty people, and it’s just like, just one of those bad shows, where you’re just like [drinking], just to get through it, and the sound system is fucked up, and it’s like in some bar with like a mechanical bull, or something. Just one of those things, in order for me to even get on stage, I’m gonna have to be clearly, I’m gonna have to be fucked up, which is, I’m not saying that’s right, I’m just saying that’s the way you feel. But, nah man, when I perform, I kinda learned a long time ago to not get really fucked up, because a) you’re not that – it’s 50/50 at whether or not you’ll really be able to pull a show off, and b) you don’t remember the shit. People are like, “oh, do you remember that part of the show where the dude burst into flames in the crowd, and they put him out with a fire extinguisher?” It’s just like, “no, actually, I don’t remember that.” I would like to remember these stories in my life. I found myself not [remembering].

How did you chart out the stage effects and lighting on the “I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead” tour?
When we first started the tour, I went deep into my pockets, like I spent a crazy amount of money on that tour. I got a publishing deal, and I basically spent all of my money on – not all of my money, but a good amount of money on setting up that tour and hiring people for that tour. The dude that I hired to do lighting for that tour, went on directly after my tour to do the Daft Punk pyramid, and then went to do the Kanye West Glow In The Dark Tour, the crazy spaceship tour. So, he helped us a lot and also, my whole idea of this shit was like, “man, it’d be nice to do a show where there’s…” because the music I felt was dramatic as hell on the record. I was just like, it’d be nice if we could actually try and do something with some showmanship, ya know? Maybe some costumes, maybe some lighting, something that was different then just seeing a dude dressed in the same clothes he’s dressed in normally, just come on stage, and just sort of walk around and rap, which is cool, but I felt like it didn’t really work for the music that I did for I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead. ISWYD was sort of this epic fucking, fucked up thing, so I was just like, I want drama.

Didn’t you guys have on masks?
Nah, nah, I was doing the sort of “Smithereens” video thing. I kinda was doing the Guantanamo Bay theme. There’s the Christmas theme, and then there’s the Guantanamo Bay theme. I think that it was just kind of fun for us, because it was just freeing. It was like inhabiting these characters to a degree, it was just like a crazy visual vibe. This experience was different than anything I’ve ever done, and I got a really good reaction from it. But, as with a lot of things, I can’t do that, all the time, because it’s like, I had a lighting guy, a sound guy, I had a set guy. I had a, ya know, it was expensive. So, I ended up doing a huge tour and really spending a lot of money on it, barely breaking even. Basically, just basically, because I was dead-set on giving a show that people weren’t giving. But now, when you go out and do like spot dates and shit, you can’t do that, but for the tours themselves, I’m trying to sort of step up, and do some cool lighting, and do some interesting shit.

Do you have an idea when your next album is coming out?
Yeah, I mean next year, that’s my idea. I kinda just – I have shit in the chamber, I kinda have shit that I’ve been working on. One of the songs was How To Serve Man, which was on the Def Jux thing. The last song on the Def Jux Presents record. And that was kinda like the one to me that was closest to being mixed, and I sorta just finished it up for that, but yeah, I really wanna drop it next year… I’m dead set on it.

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EL-P TOUR DATES:

Oct 8 2009      8:00P
ASYLUM     PORTLAND, Maine
Oct 9 2009     8:00P
Jerky’s Music Hall     PROVIDENCE, Rhode Island
Oct 10 2009     8:00P
Harpers Ferry     BOSTON, Massachusetts

[EL-P on TWITTER | MYSPACE | DEFJUXPRESENTS4]

Permalink Posted in: cage, cardboard city, ccwm, celebs, defjux, el-p, hip-hop, interview, music, nyc, shabooty, shabooty exclusive, shia labeouf Comments(9) September 17, 2009