Originally published in URB Magazine, May 2002.<\/p>\n
With Company Flow, El-P changed hip-hop. Brash, young and ready-to-battle, he became an iconoclastic hero known for apocalyptic production techniques, furious rhyme skills and a vicious sense of humor. Now his Definitive Jux label is defining the new sound of the underground and his first solo album is ready to drop. Daniel Chamberlin talks with Jaime Meline about high school shenanigans, Steven Seagal, his mother\u2019s love and how to grow up without growing old.<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cMy instinct to say devilish things, you know, in the wrong situation . . . it kicked in pretty hard when I was onstage in Madison Square Garden in front of 30,000 people.\u201d Hip-hop icon El-P is talking about his former group, Company Flow, opening up alongside Eddie Vedder, Ani Difranco and Patti Smith, for the Green Party\u2019s candidate in the 2000 presidential election, Ralph Nader.<\/p>\n \u201cThat was like, the first thing that popped into my head that I would say, you know what I mean? Like, \u2018I just want to thank Ralph Nader for his support of NAMBLA,\u2019\u201d he laughs. Any suggested alliances with the controversial National Man\/Boy Love Association would not have helped the Green Party\u2019s already slim chances in the \u201900 presidential election. \u201cThey were really nervous about having us there. They literally put us in like, a closet. We sat there all fuckin\u2019 day. After we performed \u2014 and this is the reason why Ralph Nader\u2019s kinda the man \u2014 Ralph Nader brought his fruit plate into our room. He was like, \u2018You guys are amazing . . . I\u2019m so sorry that you sat in this, like, The Matrix room where you just had to, like, imagine food.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n El-P\u2019s an imposing figure on stage \u2014 known to tumble into the crowd without missing a beat \u2014 but he\u2019s also a friendly fixture in the Brooklyn neighborhood where he\u2019s lived for the past five years. It\u2019s a place where the local bakery keeps ice coffee brewing throughout the winter just for him, and where gray-haired storekeepers invite him to backyard barbecues. Just as URB documented in our June 2001 issue, Vast Aire from Cannibal Ox lives with him, sleeping downstairs under a large Bruce Hornsby tour poster, right next to the minimal studio where Boston MC Mr. Lif is finishing up his debut album, I, Phantom, due out this fall. A rotating collection of \u201cJukies\u201d lounge upstairs playing video games on a 25-year-old television that sits under a humongous Italian Blade Runner poster.<\/p>\n I first met El-P in London, England. I was on my way to the British music festival All Tomorrow\u2019s Parties and was hitching a ride on the Def Jux tour bus. As a result, I was also crashing on the floor in a hotel room crowded with Def Jux label mates. I awoke to the motley crew debating the merits of various Steven Seagal movies and freestyling power ballads, using their MC skills to ape REO Speedwagon and Night Ranger classics. Now, a year later, El-P and Co. are still dissecting the cinematic contributions of the ponytailed martial arts meathead. Each Jukie drops scene-stealing monologues on the racial politics and metaphysical implications of Marked for Death and On Deadly Ground; they easily switch from serious discussion of classic hip-hop lore, Jay-Z, David Bowie, Radiohead and Prince to impressions of Las Vegas performer Danny Gans and tiger-loving item Siegfried & Roy.<\/p>\n \u201cMy house is like the center for the rotating commune,\u201d he says. \u201cMy couch has seen every underground rapper\u2019s ass. It’s cool, certainly there are times when I want everyone to get the fuck out of my house, but those are few and far between.\u201d<\/p>\n I\u2019m here in Brooklyn to talk with El-P about his first solo artist LP, Fantastic Damage. He\u2019s under a lot of pressure \u2014 he\u2019s handling all the producing and guest MCs only pop up on a couple of tracks. It\u2019s a highly anticipated project, because when El-P makes hip-hop, he changes hip-hop. Fantastic Damage is going to be held up to his legacy \u2014 the now-defunct Co Flow\u2019s two seminal hip-hop albums. It\u2019ll also have to live up to the suffocating inner-city cyborg hip-hop electro-clash of Cannibal Ox\u2019s The Cold Vein, an album he produced that raised expectations for his upstart label, Def Jux. Expectations fulfilled by compilations such as Definitive Jux Presents II and albums and singles from Mr. Lif, Aesop Rock and URB Next 100\u2019s RJD2.<\/p>\n With his new album \u2014 an intricate web of autobiographical lyricism locked together with monstrous distorted guitar-sample solos, fragmented bursts of rhythmic electro shrapnel and weirdly melodic doo-wop choruses \u2014 El-P is checking himself. Events of the past few years have resulted in his desire to get right with his family and his friends, to get his life together. Fantastic Damage is the sound of a brash young hip-hop hero growing the fuck up.<\/p>\n Heavy Flow Days<\/p>\n I\u2019m a thinker\/Evil anus letting off stinkers<\/em> Def Jux is so hot right now that Def Jam served the label with a cease and desist order. Now it\u2019s Definitive Jux releases that are making their way into the review pages of Entertainment Weekly and on to Billboard\u2019s Hot Rap Singles charts. Shortly after El-P unravels the in between days of Company Flow and Def Jux, disheveled Jux superstar Aesop Rock arrives at the apartment by taxi and announces happily that \u201cthey were playing [El-P single] \u2018Stepfather Factory\u2019 on the radio \u2014 the cab driver just schooled me on who El-P was.\u201d True story. But Aesop played it cool with the driver, listening to his introductory history of Company Flow \u2014 the trio of Mr. Len, Big Juss and El-P \u2014 as he steered the car up to El-P\u2019s stoop.<\/p>\n Co Flow\u2019s first LP, Funcrusher Plus, was among a handful of independently produced records that heralded the quasi-mythical underground hip-hop boom of the mid-\u201990s. The album was the first hip-hop release on Rawkus, the then-indie label that became a hip-hop powerhouse with signature compilations like Soundbombing. Already confident from a string of singles that had reportedly sold upwards of 30,000 copies \u2014 \u201cJuvenile Technics,\u201d \u201cPopulation Control,\u201d \u201c8 Steps to Perfection\u201d \u2014 on the tiny Libra and Official labels, El-P and his companions joined up with Rawkus in 1997 on their own terms, writing their own contract.<\/p>\n Co Flow\u2019s tracks are stanky, dissonant crunch-clusters of metallic hip-hop funk. The rhymes are densely woven disses, dialogues and stories, sometimes rhymed smoothly as a gust of summertime subway breeze, sometimes belched as acid-reflux spews of psychotic blitz. \u201cWe had people returning the CD to Rawkus with angry letters,\u201d El-P remembers. But it pleased NYC hip-hop locals who heard echoes of the rattled production of tracks from Slick Rick and Run-DMC. Their angular, progressive riff on classic rap construction combined with the confrontational \u201cIndependent as Fuck\u201d slogan they stamped on their records got them glowing reviews and placement high atop a cinder-block altar to DIY ethics.<\/p>\n Len, Juss and El-P\u2019s racially diverse fanbase grew, but they also became anachronistic ideologues for the mostly white, highly critical, college-dwelling \u201cbackpack\u201d set; El-P describes this archetypal fan as wearing a ponytail, Teva sandals and \u201cone of those strange Mexican sweatshirts.\u201d They identified with what they took to be Company Flow\u2019s outsider politics and anti-corporate attitudes. El-P was not necessarily happy about this. \u201cA lot of kids come in thinking that the cool shit is to be annoyed already,\u201d he says. \u201cI don\u2019t like talkin\u2019 to cats who can only talk about how shit is so dead.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve seen people defend Co Flow saying if you don\u2019t get it, then you\u2019re just not ethereal or intelligent or lucid enough,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd that pisses me off. It\u2019s like, \u2018No, if they don\u2019t like our shit, they just don\u2019t like it. It just doesn\u2019t move them the way they wanna be moving.\u2019\u201d \u201cSigned to Rawkus?\/I\u2019d rather be mouth-fucked by Nazis unconscious,\u201d he rhymes on Fantastic Damage\u2019s first single, \u201cDeep Space 9mm.\u201d In other words, he\u2019s still not cool with the label (which was recently purchased by major label MCA). \u201cI was just really fuckin\u2019 disappointed. I was like, \u2018Man, you guys had the chance to be a different kind of company,\u2019\u201d he sighs, saddened and a little exhausted by the tale he\u2019s just related. Things had deteriorated within Company Flow as well. Worried that collaborating further would endanger their friendship, El-P, Len and Juss agreed to call it quits. Their final release came in 2001 on the Def Jux Presents compilation.<\/p>\n School\u2019s Out Forever \u201cOw! Son of a bitch. I think she just ripped a chunk out of my leg,\u201d El-P grimaces. His cat, Mini Beast, has just interrupted the interview. \u201cIn the name of love,\u201d he adds and continues stroking her back. Mini Beast is the product of a broken home \u2014 a drunken girlfriend brought her over to El-P\u2019s one night years ago. The girlfriend became an ex, but El-P maintained custody. Now, although she might need her claws trimmed a bit, she\u2019s a well-adjusted, affectionate animal that everyone in the house looks after.<\/p>\n \u201cShe\u2019s just bad,\u201d says Vast. He worries over her falling out of one of the apartment\u2019s open windows and keeps hopping up to pluck her from the sill. \u201cYou know you\u2019re not supposed to be up there,\u201d he chastises.<\/p>\n The point of all this feline coddling being that cats don\u2019t tone down their attitude for anyone, so Mini Beasts genial demeanor is confirmation that El-P\u2019s apartment is a relaxing space, a hip-hop retreat that seems to live up to its communal description. There\u2019s a family vibe that runs among the label; family is something that is extremely important to Jaime Meline\u2019s everyday life, and it\u2019s the dominant theme on Fantastic Damage.<\/p>\n Born in the mid-\u201970s, El-P grew up in Manhattan and Brooklyn. His parents parted ways when he was 7 years old. His mother was raised Catholic, his father is Jewish. \u201cI somehow got none of it except a circumcision at birth. And that I’m thankful for,\u201d he deadpans when we talk about religion and family with Mr. Lif in a low-key Vietnamese restaurant. Harry Meline was \u201cjust one of those smoky-bar piano-player singing cats,\u201d and he taught Jaime to play piano when he was a child.<\/p>\n \u201cMy dad was hilarious, my dad was a fuckin\u2019 rebel,\u201d El-P says, enjoying a beverage made of beans, milk and colorful gelatin. \u201cHe always had the same authority struggles that I did. One day his boss told him that he had to wear a tie and this incensed him. The next day my dad came in with a tie tied around his head. Weirdly enough, one of the reasons I got kicked out of high school is because my principal told me that I couldn’t wear my hat backwards.\u201d<\/p>\n School was a problem for the young Meline, but not because he had trouble with the books. \u201cWe were just snotty smart kids with attitude,\u201d says schoolyard chum Jacob Kalish. \u201cThere was a run-in with a gym teacher,\u201d Kalish reminisces over kickball antics. \u201cThe teacher was kind of taunting [Jaime] before he kicked the ball. Then he kicked a home run and ran around the bases with his middle fingers in the air screaming, \u2018Eat me!\u2019 That was indicative of [his] problems. He almost got suspended, but he got out of it,\u201d he starts laughing. \u201cHis thing was getting out of it by crying.\u201d<\/p>\n When he was kicked out of his second high school \u2014 the backward baseball cap scandal \u2014 he and his mother had a heart-to-heart. \u201cMy mom sat me down and was like, \u2018Okay, here’s the deal, idiot,\u2019\u201d he smiles. \u201c\u2019You’re going to shut the fuck up, grin and bear it and go through school like everyone else does and stop being a wise ass and stop being insulted when people are trying to assert any type of authority over you. Or you’re gonna come up with Plan B.\u2019 And to my mother’s credit, God bless her, we sat down and came up with plenty. Plan B was what ended up being my life.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt was hard for me to let him go into his own vision of himself,\u201d says Nan Dillon, his mother. \u201cBut it was so clear what he really wanted to do. He missed getting some of the education, but [now] he\u2019s really educated himself, he\u2019s so unbelievably well read.\u201d \u201c[I\u2019ve been] addicted since the age of 16 to being in control of my future,\u201d he says. \u201cIt’s difficult for me to ever imagine putting myself in a position where someone else is funding [Definitive Jux] and could potentially order me to do something. I just can’t fuck around like that. I think to an extent it’s also hurt me in my life, because sometimes personality-wise when I was younger, I guess, I probably went so far out of my way to stand out. I didn’t pick my battles and probably, as a younger kid \u2014 even when I met Lenny and Juss \u2014 during those years that aspect of my personality was not roped in enough. I was too wild. I was too stubborn. Too much of a know-it-all . . . I think my goal now is the moderation of that.\u201d<\/p>\n No Sleep Till Brooklyn<\/p>\n I\u2019m a man for what it\u2019s worth\/And my family grew up without manhood in\u2019 its structure\/We were stronger for that I do believe\/We held our own against some fuckin\u2019 evil people<\/em> \u201c\u2019Last Good Sleep\u2019 was really cathartic for me as a 21-year-old. That song was 10 years in the writing,\u201d says El-P. It\u2019s a quiet Sunday night at Jux Manor. Lif\u2019s downstairs either trying to finish a chorus for his new album or trying to finish Final Fantasy X, and the rest of the house has gone out for the evening. \u201cThat was the first time I realized that there were more options than being clever and being funny and smart and having some bangin\u2019 shit.\u201d<\/p>\n Company Flow\u2019s \u201cLast Good Sleep\u201d is the true story of El-P\u2019s mother\u2019s battery at the hands of his drunken stepfather. \u201cIt sounded like an argument,\u201d he remembers. \u201cI didn’t realize my mother was getting her face smashed against a brick wall. And then it finally dawned on me the next day that it happened. For years I didn’t do anything, there was no therapy, so I was stuck with these nightmares. And this underlying, gnawing feeling of guilt that I knew or I could have known or done something to intercept this problem.\u201d His mother promptly threw the abuser out, reported the incident to the police and changed all the locks. Nobody in the Meline family talked about it for years, but for the next decade El-P had agonizing nightmares. He was still looking to confront his mother\u2019s attacker, once literally chasing a stranger through a subway car thinking it was his ex-stepfather.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I played [\u2018Last Good Sleep\u2019] for my mother she broke down and as I was holding her and telling her it was okay and it was over, all of a sudden I was in a position where I was healing her and healing me. I had my last nightmare that night,\u201d he says. \u201cIt was over for me.\u201d<\/p>\n For Nan, the real catharsis came when he performed the song for her at Company Flow\u2019s final show on March 29, 2001. \u201cWhat an amazing celebration of our relationship for him to be able to do that,\u201d she says, \u201cwith no shame and no secrets. I just stood there and cried. Fantastic Damage picks up where \u201cLast Good Sleep\u201d left off. It\u2019s an album about growing up and figuring out your priorities in life (see sidebar for El-P\u2019s breakdown). For El-P, that meant leaving his paranoia behind \u2014 he\u2019s still got boxes of matches, candles and purified water left over from his cache of Y2K survival supplies \u2014 in favor of maturity and responsibility. \u201cMy younger sister almost got hurt really badly a couple years ago, actually, New Year’s Day 2000,\u201d he remembers, reluctant to reveal details. \u201cThe same day that I was holed up, high on drugs, thinking the world was going to end, sharpening my stick, planning my mountaintop commune. Then I got a phone call that I wasn’t expecting. Something really serious had happened to [her] and that was one of the things that affected me and one of the themes of my album that just, it hit home, fuck this. I cannot sit around and be involved in this conspiracy, fear shit, I can’t sit around and ignore any more, musically, the relationships I have with these people I love.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s very clear to me that Jaime is now a man,\u201d says his mom, the pride obvious in her voice. \u201cHaving been through the pains of a helpless boy who suffered powerlessly and fought his way through it. Now he has more personal power than anyone I can think of.\u201d<\/p>\n Focus on the Family<\/p>\n Boy meets world, of course his pops is gone\/What you figure\/That chalky outline on the ground is a father figure?<\/em> Since El-P spends most of his time in the company of Jukies, he admits that\u2019s where his own paternal instincts show. He smiles proudly when he sees Vast heading off to meet fellow Cannibal Ox Vordul Megilah for a practice session. Though PlayStation 2 games are a dominant pastime, El-P is the last to have a go at a fresh copy of State of Emergency. \u201cIt\u2019s on some really ignorant shit,\u201d he laughs as Lif, Vast and Aesop brutalize riot police in the game\u2019s mall-based looter-melees.<\/p>\n \u201cThe boss has always been great,\u201d says Aesop. \u201cIt wasn’t Aesop at first, it was \u2018Hey little bitch, get the coffee, you fuckin\u2019 asshole.\u2019 On several occasions he spilled a cup over my head because it had too much sugar or too little sugar. Eventually I just battled him.\u201d He can\u2019t keep a straight face but keeps the pranks rolling. \u201cHe doesn’t like my shit very much. I’m just a sex symbol.\u201d<\/p>\n All of the Jukies clown El-P when he\u2019s in the room, but in private interviews \u2014 \u201cbenevolent, Jesus-like genius\u201d is the phrase he suggests to Lif, Vast and Aesop as he heads for the door \u2014 they identify him as a concerned friend who is also one of the most sought-after producers working in contemporary hip-hop.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have managed to create a family for each other where we know that we get to have fun,\u201d says El-P. \u201cI get a chance to be around people who I can really honestly talk to. Hopefully, I think they know how much it concerns me what they’re feeling and what they’re going through. It gives me a chance to let myself be selfless and let myself be involved in something that isn’t just me.\u201d He smiles wryly, catching himself mid-soliloquy. \u201cAnd in conclusion, I\u2019m just a really great human.\u201d<\/p>\n ##<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Originally published in URB Magazine, May 2002. With Company Flow, El-P changed hip-hop. Brash, young and ready-to-battle, he became an iconoclastic hero known for apocalyptic production techniques, furious rhyme skills and a vicious sense of humor. Now his Definitive Jux … Continue reading
\n\u2014 Company Flow, \u201c8 Steps to Perfection\u201d<\/p>\n
\nBut by 1999, Company Flow\u2019s second major release, the more ethereal, lucid instrumental album Little Johnny From the Hospitul was not moving the way they wanted it to. El-P blamed Rawkus for engineering a distribution deal without their permission and Co Flow subsequently decided to make their departure.<\/p>\n
\nThis is for kids worried about the apocalypse\/Do something and stop talking shit<\/em>
\n\u2014 El-P, \u201cTruancy\u201d<\/p>\n
\nEl-P aced his GED and enrolled in audio engineering school, where he excelled. After graduating, he decided to give higher education a try and enrolled at Hunter College, but says he felt \u201cconfused and itchy\u201d since most of his courses didn\u2019t relate to the direction he was headed. In 1993, Company Flow released their first single, \u201cJuvenile Technics,\u201d and he dropped out.<\/p>\n
\n\u2014 El-P, \u201cConstellation Funk\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\u201cI think he\u2019s more aware of himself as a spokesperson for a lot of hurt people,\u201d she says. \u201cI can feel him baring that responsibility now.<\/p>\n
\n\u2014 Cannibal Ox, \u201cIron Galaxy\u201d<\/p>\n