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The Album Club: "I'll Sleep When You're Dead" by EL-P
http://www.trollheart.com/EIP.jpg
Last one in round three people. Discuss, rate, comment and review here. |
I am undecided how to vote, it is a toss up between Like or Meh. If I vote Meh, it not because I am apathetic to the album. It is because all the plus and minuses even out. I've listen to the album from beginning to end last week. Read along with the lyrics for the first couple of songs. I think the guy has talent. I like his flow, and his rhyming. It was old school. But some things in his lyrics I didn't care for, really really didn't care for. Some of the music was excellent on the album. A few song had sounds that I thought didn't work. One was some kind of corny synths or samples or whatever, but it takes away from an already decent backing track. The other with steady gun fire which I didn't care for. I don't think I will listen to this album again on own out of the club.
rating: 3/5 |
*EL-P, not EI-P
This was my introduction to El-P. I copped this record a solid decade ago. Tasmanian Pain Coaster, Smithereens, Poisoneville Kids,The Overly Dramatic Truth, Drive. So many great tracks! LOVE IT! Good lookin' out Trollheart! |
This is better than Cancer 4 Cure and everybody deep down knows it
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Poisenville Kids No Wins / Reprise [This Must Be Our Time]
This is the sound of what you don't know, killing you This is the sound of what you don't need, still true This is the sound of what you don't want, still in you Never again When a live wire lights Little metal rail: right Where a marvel of engineering steered me clear into the plight Right before the bodegas open After the peak of night Before the paper's delivered I sat on the corner and sparked a light The same corner I perched when I zone dropped on the block first At almost 5 o'clock watching for sun spots and store clerks A lone spot It was kinda like the zone was forgot As if the grid had been reset and couldn't catch to the clock Or the stoop was stuck in the past a half minute And I sat in it With a loosie Newpy drift out of my lips Taste: half minted Come on And I felt like a hundred bucks in the pocket of a gambling lush At a wondershowzen flow with the droids of destructo luck Fugitoid on the run again The sky gleamed the maroonish coloring Layered against the bluest tone from where the thunder lived And here I was directly under it Like some dejected little grey they told to stay and wait for the mothership A cotton ball in a blizzard of mischief A brain prison With a thought that rode on the bus and came for conjugal visits And fucked its way into my gray matter The tattered territory Stayed chattering and nagging till it demanded it yell it for me And I tried to hold the thing back But the meditation was otherly Fixated on what a friend said and relating it to my struggling Metropoloid void so damn smothering But we were children of Poisenville and saw the seduction less repugnant And reserved the right as the triggerman with the back-up plan of self destruction And I touched the type of chemicals that could pull me towards that function It's the stuff I find hard for discussion How the fuck do you explain your own self destruction and still remain trusted? Come on To answer the question: yes The city wants you gone And that’s the only thing connecting us But the connection is so strong So how dare you assume that I'll sleep when you're dead? This is well outside the boundaries of acceptable behavior I will not give you the go ahead And you will not be remembered fondly I'm throwing down the gauntlet And fuck you This isn't your decision And for all the holy fuck I give Your little spectacle is ended But don't think for just one second you've honored your obligations to me I'm serious Look in my eyes I don't find this funny Or whatever you imagine poetry and justice feels like when you combine them I am not going to allow this on my watch, buddy Nobodies impressed with your imagined sacrifice device or insurmountable regret You are not uniquely pained and if you go we won't be sorry And who the hell are you to put me through the banality of watching this? Cuz many better men have gone for clearly better reasons And I starkly must remind you that you have not even been trying And that's the only thing remarkable about you Stop me if I'm lying We are always outnumbered But we were never out militia’d There's no dignity for criminals No ministry for the wicked In this town, if you make a sound, you're the leper with the most fingers The League of Extraordinary Nobodies The other team’s bringing in ringers No faith in the majority No hope for the little ones Sally pulled a pistol out Billy got a blunderbuss So what the fuck are you feeling that makes your struggle so wondrous? Enough to arrogantly pull what's left of the rug out from under us? I think not You're in the same barrel All us other crabs are caught And if I have to live, you have to live Whether you like this shit or not Never again Come on Dedicated to the drowning and the noble futility of the desperate friends forced to watch Never again And to my good friends who refused to allow it to happen to me Never again You know who you are You know what I'm talking about Never again Believe me, man I promise Never, never, never gonna get that way again If you can't appreciate this, then I pity you. |
I wanted to love this because I love Run the Jewels, but I'm a music person first and a lyrics person like... third or fourth, honestly. I wish the songwriting and production was more varied. Not that it doesn't have some great moments, it's just obviously not the priority here. Unfotunately, that doesn't leave me much to return to.
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El-P – I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead (2007)
Best Tracks: Up All Night, the League of Extraordinary Nobodies, Habeas Corpus ( Draconian Love) Weakest Tracks: Dear Sirs, Run the Numbers Another Hip-Hop album though in somewhat of a different style than Open Mike Eagle. I found this album more enjoyable. I thought there were some pretty nice uses of sampling. I was still trying to place the sample on Drive and now I remember where I had heard something similar, Fatboy Slim’s Weapon of Choice (I assume that too was also a sample). I liked the music especially. I tend to pay less attention to the lyrics unless the language is especially crude or violent. I don’t think this album crossed the line there. I really liked the line in Habeas Corpus (I found love on a prison ship). El-P seems to be demented at time in a Weird Al sort of way I guess. Overall, there were really no tracks that I would call absolute classics, but the poorer tracks aren’t the worst I’ve heard either. In other words, the album is fairly consistent. I bounced from giving this album a 6 or a 7 (I am saying I like it), but I really couldn’t decide whether the better parts rated or the lesser parts took the album down a little. So I’ll go halfway with my assessment. 6.5/10 (the Word has spoken :D) |
The production/soniclandscape and beats are boss. The themes and lyrics are boss. The delivery is machine gun fire but static. His rapping is fierce but not dynamic. Unfortunately, that’s a significant drawback. 3/5
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