If you need to be told why you should go see El-P, it might be too late. The rapper, producer, label owner, has been around since the mid-90s, he is one of the best rappers around, a wordy weirdo obsessed with gangsta viciousness and, according to Wikepidia, the sainted Sci-Fi genius Phillip K. Dick, and he has a great new album out, Cancer 4 Cure.
This is the other part of rap, semi-popular, semi-underground, intensel and hard rhythms on rhythms. And it is very, very good. Killer Mike, who you probably know from Outkast's "Snapping And Trapping" , and whose R.A.P. Music passed me by last year but I am plaing catch up right now, will be opening.
This music reminds me of the underground heavy metal scene that spawned Metallica in the 1980s. There is a similar mutation on a mainstream sound being taken somewhere else entirely and of a secret handshake of sound. The difference is it is hard to imagine it going mainstream.
Right this second, both "The Full Retard" and "Drones Over Brooklyn" are systematically blowing me away and while I started this by saying "if you need to be told why it might be too late…" I am as recent a convert as imaginable, happening upon El-P on Letterman and being verily blown away.
Iriving Plaza, friday, July 13th…