“Rest in peace, MCA. Rest in peace, Maurice Sendak.”
Halfway through his Letterman debut last week, El-P tipped his hat to two influential creative figures that recently passed away. Backed by six musicians, the influential Brooklyn-based rapper/producer attacked his late-night rendition of “Stay Down” with a focused intensity and aggression. These elements have remained Jaime Meline’s calling cards throughout his two decades as a solo artist and member of Company Flow.
As David Letterman thanked him in the closing moments of the show, Meline goofed off behind the host, making faces and embracing his spotlight to the fullest. Things seem to be going well for El-P these days. He recently tweeted that it was a New Yorker’s dream to make that TV appearance. He’s also collaborated with Atlanta rap stalwart Killer Mike on his new release R.A.P. Music. Most importantly, he’s releasing Cancer for Cure, his first proper record in five years.
El-P has built a career exploring the bleaker sides of humanity, adeptly waxing poetic about everything from dystopian societies to conspiracy theories. Along the way, he’s exuded more than his fair share of polarizing opinions. Some might call them cynical; he’d say they’re honest. But for someone whose music is routinely referred to as dark and pessimistic, he wouldn’t necessarily view himself in that light.
“A lot of times people interpret what I do as being pessimistic, and the fact of the matter is that I don’t feel that way,” Meline explains. “I think in a lot of ways these records and the characters that I put forward in these records is me acknowledging, you know, the pessimism, but the act of trying to fight for it, trying to figure it out and trying to, and I think that in itself is a very, you know, optimistic act.”
On Cancer for Cure, the rapper/producer turned inward to make sense of the world around him. Rather than seeing his outside surroundings as the default issue at hand, he’s taken stock of himself in hopes of gaining personal clarity.
“In a lot of ways I’m writing a story based on my mind and based on my life,” he says. “I’m writing a story of a man who’s flailing about and trying to make sense of shit.”
While finishing this album revitalized El-P as an artist, the making of this record was anything but a walk in the park. Dealing with the death of a close friend, the indefinite hiatus of Def Jux and his admitted destructive behavior, Meline struggled with coming to grips about his own life circumstances.
“I feel like it was like waking up the next day after a huge bender, and that’s what the record kind of felt like to me,” El-P reflects. “You know, waking up like naked in your apartment with fucking drugs and alcohol strewn across the coffee table and cigarettes put out in a bowl and waking up alone and early and just realizing just looking around and just being like, you know what, fuck this shit.”
This awakening started with “$ Vic/FTL (Me and You),” the first track that El-P wrote for Cancer for Cure, following the death of fellow Def Jux rapper and comrade Camu Tao, who passed away in May 2008 after a two-year battle with lung cancer.
“It was the first song I had written after my friend passed away and I was in a low place for a while,” he remembers. “I dedicate the record to him on ‘$4 Vic’ so it’s not something that I was trying to hide, I just think that there’s a tasteful way, I didn’t want to make a record about Camu, you know, I didn’t want to make my ‘I’ll Be Missing You’ cause I just think that there’s something’s that you just can’t really explain and don’t even owe to anybody to explain or to try.”