“I’m pretty sure I have a legitimately sharp edge to my personality”
– El-P
El-P is not a businessman by nature, but rather, by necessity. In a music industry smeared with artistic ultraviolence and held together by cobweb sutures, the Brooklyn, New York-based emcee decided to take matters into his own, deft hands and start an independent hip-hop label in 1999, calling it Definitive Jux Records. It wasn’t long before the label became one of the most legit and dynamic sources for underground hip-hop in the country. “The greatest thing that can ever happen for an artist is to make money off what he does for a living,” El-P says. “One of the worst things that can happen for an artist is to all of a sudden be this little guppy in a fish tank full of piranhas.”
Rather than balk at the challenge of running his own business, El-P enlisted a slew of talent such as Cannibal Ox, Aesop Rock, Cage, and Rob Sonic, amongst others, and the players quickly became recognized as some of the most influential on the scene. One of the label’s biggest releases in 2007 was El-P’s own full-length I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead, which saw El-P master the politics of provocation with his music and ease through dissections of the human condition with dexterity and total confidence. The album is a rhyme-sayer’s reckoning, of sorts – 13 tracks of post-millennial hip-hop for the gas mask generation.
Last May, Daniel Robert Epstein chatted with El-P about I’ll Sleep When Youre Dead, but SuicideGirls had a few more questions to ask so we caught up with the emcee and CEO (again) to talk business and pleasure – or more specifically, what happens when your pleasure becomes your business.
Read our exclusive interview with El-P on SuicideGirls.com.
