Taking What Is His

When New York independent hip-hop crew Company Flow dropped their debut full-length release, Funcrusher Plus, on Rawkus Records in 1997, it was like a napalm bomb hitting the rap game. Fiercely flying the flag of independence, Company Flow's incendiary rhymes and next-level beats set the underground bar notches higher than it had been in years, and the crew - El Producto, Big Jus and Mr. Len - reached legendary cult status by injecting a fresh sound into a realm that was starting to suffer from its own stagnation.
When Rawkus fell to Priority Records in the great label mergers of the late-1990s, Company Flow - whose motto, "Independent as Fuck," was emblazoned across the inside of Funcrusher Plus' tray card - decided that their needs would be better suited elsewhere, and took their leave of Rawkus. But separating professional interests drove the group to break up, and Company Flow's de facto frontman, El P, launched Definitive Juxtaposition Records, a.k.a. Def Jux, his own completely independent label.
Since the launch of Def Jux Records, El P has helmed the successful and critically acclaimed album releases by NYC rapper Aesop Rock and duo Cannibal Ox - The Cold Vein album, which El P produced - as well as his own first substantial collection of original tunes since Company Flow's Funcrusher Plus, the definitive, brutally honest and appropriately titled Fantastic Damage. A man whose star is on the rise thanks solely to his own talent and drive, El P is fast becoming one of independent hip-hop's national poster boys, with notice being paid by such media as Spin and Urb magazines, and a growing army of fans and musically like-minded supporters following suit. El P and his fellow Def Jux artists (collectively known as the "Def Jukies") are creating something that could very well change the face of hip-hop music, and as El P tells from his native New York City, while the concepts of change and innovation that Def Jux employs are not for sale, they are part of what is ultimately a collective experience.

How long after you parted ways with Rawkus did things get going at Def Jux?
I got Def Jux going before I parted with Rawkus, it was already in the works. From the day we told Rawkus that we wanted out, it took us about a year for them to finally just let us out. So during that time, I was preparing - doing music, making the Company Flow stuff, doing the Cannibal Ox stuff, setting up the company.

Is the business side of music something that you always been driven to do?
It was something that I became driven to do after some initial experiences in the industry when I was really young that freaked me out; and after getting some good information and some good insight from some people that I respected, and sort of studied what was going on. It was also part accident, in terms of doing our initial EP and singles independently and it actually working. That was in itself motivation because it was like, 'Oh shit, whaddya mean we're selling records? Whattya mean I can pay rent on time at the office?' It's the idea of self-empowerment, the idea of taking shit into my own hands and not having to deal with the ideas or lack of philosophy or negativity that surrounds these other types of situations that you can get into as an artist. I kind of developed the philosophy early and it just kept growing, and once I felt like I had the experience and understanding to actually make it work was when I decided to give it another shot, and really give it a go - leave Rawkus and do Def Jux. You know, it's all founded in my beliefs that we have to take what is ours, and in my opinion, there is no more obvious revolution available than to carve out chunks of this fuckin' weird established bureaucracy and capitalist society, seize it and change it. Use it for yourself and by the time you're done with it, it should look completely different. That's the idea.

You mention established bureaucracy and a capitalist society. Is it tough to maintain independence in an industry that is run buy a corporate bureaucracy that literally controls the marketplace?
It's tough to maintain it because we don't have private investors, which so many labels do; we don't have someone with money backing us and taking a percentage of the company. So the tough thing is this: We've got the music and we've got people who are buying the music, but how do we actually pay the rent on the office? That's the reality of the situation. It's funny because I've kinda gotten these weird vibes over the past year or so because of the growing profile of our label - like we have helicopters or something - when the reality is that there are times here, like at any label and maybe even five, six seven time a year, when you're on the brink of disaster. That's any business, like a magazine, a label, anything that's done on an independent level that doesn't have the cushion of someone who is giving it money. At the same time, you have complete autonomy in terms of what you want to do vision-wise, with creative and business decisions - anything you would need or want to do, or you that feel is correct. If I go bankrupt tomorrow, it's okay because I do this on the terms that I need to do it on. But that is the biggest struggle, and because it's a business, you need to keep the money going, so that's what you end up busting your ass to do. You need to be prepared for that.

These days, the Internet can help artists reach fans, but it's used by a lot of people to bootleg advance releases. That happened to Def Jux with Aesop Rock's Labor Days album, and more recently with your new album. Is the Internet a necessary evil for artists?
Sure that's a problem…and people wonder why I have annoying computer voices on my promo CD releases. But I don't think it's evil, I think the Internet like a telephone. Is a telephone evil? Yeah, when the fuckin' pervert down the block is calling your daughter and soliciting sex. Then, yes, the telephone is evil. When you need to call your friend, then naw, it's not. The problem, the tricky complexity of [the Internet], is that all of a sudden the individual has more power than they're used to, and I don't think that kids are ready for power, period. I'm not ready for power and I'm 27, you know what I mean? I don't think that 12-, 13-, 14- or 15-year-old kids are up to handling the responsibility of being able to take their favorite artist's album and put it up on the Internet, or having the album in front of them and actually making the decision not to. There are kids who do it, but it's a difficult thing.
So all of a sudden, as an artist, you get into some weird questions about the relationship between yourself and your fans. A lot of the fans don't understand the industry and how the business works. They don't understand how if affects your relationship with retail if you don't sell a certain percentage of your initial shipment in the first couple of weeks, which therefore affects how much money you get for distribution, which affects the amount of records you can put out in a year, which affects what you can do for the records. But people are a little too quick to expound on their own perception or philosophy of how it helps or doesn't help.
I especially don't like the idea that as soon as I send my shit out to the press, someone is going to leak it the day they get it. That's disturbing to me, that's malignant and disrespectful. At the same time I can't stop it. The reality is that if five thousand people don't buy your record because they got it off the Internet - and that's a very realistic number - that hurts because there is a difference between selling 15 thousand records and 20 thousand records. Major label artists are getting fucked anyway because the major labels just press the CDs up and sell 'em on Canal Street. They've been doing that for years, and I can almost comprehend that because there's money to be made. It's shifty and it's fucked up, but there's money to be made and I don't understand just giving it away. I can't get with these pseudo anarchists, the half-cocked new-jack anarchist who thinks that sharing all information is somehow righteous when in reality all they want to do is just be cool. There are times for that and there are times not for that. If you want people like Can Ox and Aesop Rock to be able to release records and keep doing their thing, then you can't do that because it's a relationship between us - us and the fan, us and the consumer. We hold our end up, we're respectful to you, we put out the best music we can in the best way and we bust our asses to make it available to you. The least you can do it help us if you care. But in the end it's not that big of a deal, you know what I'm saying? I'm just gonna put annoying voices on my press advances.

You've been working a lot over the last few years, but the Fantastic Damage album is your first full-length of new material since the Company Flow days. How have your beat-making and rhyming skills changed since then?
I've always attempted to keep progressing on what I'm doing because to me, that is the essence of being involved in hip-hop culture. If you're a graf writer, you have to have the next piece, the next style; if you're a DJ you can't win with a routine that you did last year because someone probably studied and practiced it and probably has it down better than you now; if you're up-rocking, you're not going to win with same fuckin' move where you grab your nuts and then you go backwards. It's hip-hop, you know? I like to think that I take risks and move forward.
I think I'm a much better producer that I used to be, and that's clear. I've stuck with it for a long time, I've worked at it and I've just become more of technician, I understand the structure of music more and I can do things with the equipment that I have that I didn't know how to do before - conceptually and technically. I think that this record is much more like [Company Flow's] Funcrusher Plus in the sense that, with the Can Ox record, it was one scene, one sound that I tried to give those guys, something that people will remember about that album production-wise, but with Fantastic Damage, I didn't wanna make like a Cannibal Ox part two without Cannibal Ox, and I didn't wanna make a Company Flow part two without Company Flow. So it's El P part one, but I did follow my lineage a little closer from Company Flow. Where I think my vibe exists and where the strength is, is bringin' that pain, that shit that makes people wanna kick walls in. So I kind of took the Funcrusher shit and throw it eight years into the future in the sense that it's now and it's filtered through my new understanding of music and my new experiences, which is something that developed over the past five or six years.

The music on the Cannibal Ox record really is grand and kind of soundtrack-y.
Yeah, I felt like I was making a film score with that album. I wanted to make music that was narrative, that even if you didn't quite get the lyrics, you would get the emotion because the music brought you there.

Fantastic Damage does a pretty good job of conveying emotion too. The first beat alone, the title track, is super fucking heavy and hits harder than just about everything else on the album.
Yeah, it's a pretty brutal way to open a record, and to me it was like, you know what? Let's not even bullshit, let's not even play games here people - I'm punching you in your fucking neck. My thought was that, if you can survive the album's first two songs, then it gets easy, it's all downhill from there. I was laughing about it because I thought it was so arrogant. It's the most arrogant way to start a record because we put the most uncomfortable music blaringly right up front. There are moments that are more comfortable to listen to, but hey man, I don't wanna fuck around, I'm not playing games and I don't wanna be ambiguous about what I'm doing. It's like, I'm not your fucking friend. Period. I'm me, and you don't live in a world of friends, you live in a world of guns.
Lyrically, I think I've grown into different styles, different ways of flipping my shit. I'm playing with a lot of different styles on the record, slowing it down here and there, and I think that realistically, the biggest difference is that [Fantastic Damage] is a much more reflective record, a much more personal record. There are jams that, after listening to them, you're really gonna get a sense of who I am as a person, as opposed to getting a perception of an aspect of my personality. I'm actually telling you some real things about me and my life.

A lot of fans seem to identify with your lyrics on a personal level, even getting into heated discussions on Internet message boards. Are they reading too much into what you're saying?
I could never say that. The only time I would say that - and I've seen it a million times - is when cats argue for an hour over lyrics that they transcribed from my record that are completely wrong to begin with. But I don't know, it's not up to me to say that, man. I can say that the reason my shit is more reflective, more personally cathartic, is because I realized at a certain point that it is powerful. That kind of stuff is what people can connect to, and I refuse to stand on a soapbox. If I'm saying something, it's coming from my perspective, a human perspective, a fallible perspective. I think that people can relate to that, to struggle both internal and external, and I'm offering an honest view of some of my internal and external struggle. And it's not just a record about me, you're not just, like, watching a movie about me. Rappers write about themselves, but in reality, we all live in the same society and no one has a completely isolated experience, apart from the details.

There's a lyric on the Company Flow / Cannibal Ox split 12" record about people who think they know you because they spin you at home, "forget the rules of engagement / get smacked to the pavement." Is that a reference to a specific occurrence?
Naw, man, that was just a comment on the little-bit-twisted relationship between musician and consumer. Every once in a while, motherfuckers think that because they got you in their CD player, they got you in their palm too. But you know, I'm a grown man and you can't step to me on some bullshit and ask me a whole bunch of personal questions. Sometimes, you can encounter people who have an entire relationship with you and you haven't even met them yet. It's like, look, I make music so let's try to leave it at that. Don't come and get mad at me for saying something about this or that. I'm not your fuckin' brother or your daddy. It's powerful stuff and it's very strange. That's why I don't have any aspirations for fame, really. I'm more interested in success. Fame can basically eat a dick. I don't particularly enjoy the idea of being exposed to too many people because cats can take that shit too far. But you know, I can't complain because I'm not even close to being in the situations that other artists are in with that. I designed it that way, I like it that way. I like being a regular person.

Is there a grand vision of where this is going, or do you just hit it day by day?
You know, I don't really, but I wish I had a grand vision. I think I have more of just an idea: In two years, I'd like to look around at all the people that I'm working with - Cannibal Ox, Mr. Lif, Aesop Rock, RJD2, Murs, Y@k ballz, Rob Sonic, Camu Tao, Masai Bey - and see that they're doing their thing, that they're working artists, that they're happy and they don't feel cheated. I just would like to look around and see that these people are able to do the music that they want to do, don't feel that they've compromised anything, and are also creating something for themselves - that they're stable, financially. And I'd like to see the relationship between the label and the people who are supporting us remains intact. I don't wanna shit on the people who are making us. I wanna do what Rawkus should have done, which is just continue to put music out and continue to take risks ands give a lot of credit to the listeners, to say to them, "You're ready for this and here ya' go. And we're gonna put money behind it if we can, because we believe in it too."

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