I'll Sleep When You're Dead

Alright, enough time past by since the last post and its time for the week to begin (celebrated with a new blog layout and font size). A review of 5 hip-hop albums for the first Comaforum themed blog week. The first, because of no particular reason, is the best album of 2007 so far. It is El-P's I'll Sleep When You're Dead -- the title is appropriate, the rhymes are relentless, the combination of vengeance and intelligence elevates his lyrics above most anything marketed as hip-hop music. At its basics, hip-hop is poetry and lyrical expression over well-crafted beats. El-P does not ignore the importance of his lyrics or mask them with fancy rhythms. Here's an example of a few lines from the track No Kings:

Welcome to my bastard delight night, gents
Where everything has a meaning but none of it makes sense
Living is so demeaning but rappers still wanna offer
Fake aliens...from lying saucers
I don't have the time, man
I'm searching for bigger answers

Most people have not heard of El-P. He grew up around music. The son of a jazz musician, he learned hip-hop in the streets of New York City, probably the best place to learn the culture. For El-P, hip-hop is life, there is nothing more to him then the feeling and emotion of music and it shows in his songs. I like to review albums where the artist devotes himself entirely to his project and invests his time, not for the sake of money, but to push the boundaries and to make songs that are intelligent, creative, and most importantly, ones that have a great sound.

A friend introduced me to El-P only a few months ago. I listened to a few songs of his early stuff casually, but never paid any strong attention to his lyrics or sound. When I was in Virgin Records, I decided to check out his new album. After browsing through a few songs, I bought the album and started listening to it immediately when I got home. I've had the album on repeat ever since.

I'll Sleep When You're Dead is a great synthesis of story and beat -- obviously not the story told to children about kings and castles, but a cynical tale that rips apart the way hip-hop glorifies material value. Instead of bragging about the size of the rims on his Escalade or the amount of dope he smoked lost night , El-P raps about disparity, whether in finding love or living in the inner city. In Tasmanian Pain Coast, he describes the story of a man addicted to crack -- a man who becomes invisible, yet still has a tangible effect on the mainstream:

He pulled his hoody off his cabbage rugged practical
And began to fancy the words I mistakenly jostled loose
The stogie he brazenly lit where he sit looked legit
But when the flame touched to the tip I could smell it's of another nit
He leaned his head back and inhaled the newpie dip and said
"The whole design got my mind cryin', if I'm lyin' I'm dyin'..shit"

Sometimes the lyrics are a little befuddled -- he at points scarifies lyrical quality to make a rhythm or fit the lyrics to a particular beat. However, the imagination is always present, whether you agree with his opinion or not. Ingenuity is something that is absent in music -- there is a lack of perspective in tying the personal problems of the artist into the broader issues of society and into the constraints on our generation. Hip-hop does not have to be overtly political or cover every social problem throughout the course of the album. It does however need to recognize its importance and saliency in the lives on millions, especially those that live in the poorer neighborhoods and in the inner city. Hip-hop should be a vehicle of positive change and progression and it should at least identify and address some of the problems that are faced by the people who listen to it.