Album Of The Week: El-P Cancer For Cure

Once upon a time, I hated Company Flow. Their music sounded like rap as rigid noise-attack, all funless bellowing and construction-site clang. El-P's solo yammer "Patriotism" was the one track I always skipped on the great Rawkus compilations Soundbombing II. Whenever his voice showed up on the underground rap albums I loved, like Atmosphere's Lucy Ford on the Quannum Spectrum compilation, I'd get that forehead crease of immediate, physical annoyance. When Company Flow splintered and the Rawkus insurgence abruptly died, I liked a lot of the stuff on Def Jux, El's new skronk-rap empire. I liked Cannibal Ox's The Cold Vein and Aesop Rock's Bazooka Tooth and Cage's Hell's Winter and (especially) Mr. Lif's I Phantom. I liked the way these guys seemed to present a united front, their voices running interweaving commando maneuvers through El's chaotic battlefield productions. I like how all the CDs had big, elaborately art-designed booklets. But I still wasn't too sure about El himself. His productions started to get more layered and dynamic, but I still felt like they wanted to attack me, not move me. I remember going to see him live in maybe 2002 and immediately wanting my money back because the fucker would not rap on-beat. And I especially didn't like the idea -- one not really propagated by the label itself, but one which I saw everywhere anyway -- that these guys were supposed to be a more vital antidote to mainstream rap -- mainstream rap that was, at the time, fucking awesome. I had a hard time coming up with reasons to give a shit about C-Rayz Walz when there were new Petey Pablo or Beanie Sigel tracks exploding my face on the radio all the time. But then that particular war ended, and everyone lost. Def Jux went out of business, and Beanie and Petey are probably more underground than El-P at this point, through no decision of their own. And all of a sudden, I absolutely love everything El-P touches. Still trying to work out how that happened, but his new Cancer For Cure is an absolute dagger-throwing samurai warrior of an album.