EL-P
at the Cat's Cradle, Carrboro, NC
6.07.07
Words by Jordan Carpenter
Photos by AW Henderson

"I just counted in my head the number of people in this room I'm talking to that I would never give the time." This is the line that starts "The League of Extrodinary Nobodies," a glorious and hilarious song (or "sit-com," as he calls it—it even comes with a built-in laugh track) off El-P's new album I'll Sleep When You're Dead. When he spat it this past Thursday night at the Cat's Cradle, he raised his eyes to the ceiling and gave a quiet little grin, as if to keep the audience from thinking he was talking about them. He was.
Well, he has the right. El-Producto is, after all, a god: Zeus of the pantheon that is Def Jux, presiding over other indie rap deities like Cage, Aesop Rock, and Mr. Lif. He is the most distinctive producer in hip-hop today: his beats twist in on themselves like gritty, urban background noise somehow rendered funky, and he has honed a paranoid, aggressive style of rapping to complement them. His songs are disorienting, dark and viciously difficult, containing lyrics like "Pass me the gloves, mask, and flask / And the cheapest liquor you have" and "Thank god for the drugs and drums / Tell history that I'll be right here hiding from guns." This Thursday, his band wore camouflage fatigues and masks; El-P walked onstage covered in what I certainly hope was fake blood. As his disturbing, dangerous beats filled the club, Producto looked over the crowd and asked us to "Say yeah." Wait...what?
"Say yeah"?! It wasn't a mistake; the audience boisterously complied and El-P followed it up by asking us to "Say yeah" again, and then to say "Yeaaaahhhh." Throughout the night he would tell us "It's a real honor to be here, seriously," spin an amusing anecdote between songs, implore people to wave their hands in the air and even give a stock speech condemning the Iraq war and army recruitment. I almost couldn't believe what I was hearing; the king of underground, dangerous, fucked-up hip-hop was actually giving... a standard rap show?
There were some plusses to this choice. After the openers Hanger 18, Yak Ballz, and Slow Suicide Stimulus, who by all accounts were utterly forgettable, El-P and his band quickly established themselves as confident, competent and charismatic. The crowd, clearly made up of die-hard fans, had loads of energy and actually sang along with singles like "Deep Space 9mm" and "Tasmanian Pain Coaster." He often prompted us to sing along with his more memorable lines, which had the amusing effect of a room-full of people boisterously shouting, "I'd rather be mouth-fucked by Nazis unconscious!", a moment that would have been ridiculous had it not been so electric.
El-P, normally associated with anger and discomfort, practically played the role of a party emcee, and it was the first time I realized how talented a rapper he is. He played up the narratives and hooks (which, I must admit, are extremely hook-y) and effortlessly wrapped his mouth around even his densest lyrics, making stuff like "The paganistic prayer of a heathen with wild past / Please forgive my bastardized style dash / And anoint me with salvation in form of non-crash" sound positively Nas-like.
All of this is El-P's choice, of course. If he wants to just give an energetic show, being cheered, playing up his emcee skills and playing down the nightmares, more power to him. Still, the bloody make-up, bizarre projected images, and dark subject matter all implied a more dramatic, arty show than was actually given, and I couldn't help but feel it was a missed opportunity. I'm not asking for the GWAR treatment, but when a guy as distinctive as El-Producto smoothes over all his edges to please a crowd, there is something wrong.
Unless maybe... that was the point. There's no way to "get" El-P's intelligence and paranoia while in a live club setting, and that disconnect, in retrospect, created the kind of discomfort found in the experience of listening to the guy's albums. Was Producto making fun of us for being so rocked-out? It's possible; indie audiences expect to be disdained by their heroes a little bit—some folks, like the assholes down at William's Street, have practically turned it into their whole schtick ("Hey kids, new Sealab episodes in September! Oh wait... we canceled that. Fuck you.")
El-P finished the show with his biggest hit, "Stepfather Factory," and as he finished up his great, smooth, effortless performance, the crowd went nuts, all the while having to pretend he was not just rapping about child abuse, and that a cold, robotic voice was not slowly chanting, "Why are you making me hurt you? I love you." El-P's whole career is spent mocking mindlessness; is there anything more mindless than jumping up and down and waving your hands in the air, or chanting a dude's name so he'll come out and do an encore? "This is the sound of what you don't know killing you" indeed.
Which brings me back to The League of Extrodinary Nobodies. While ostensibly about the boredom of hanging out with cokeheads, the performance seemed to sum up El-P's attitude towards the whole show. The last line of that song is "And we haven't even gotten to the part where it's a joke." The audience cheered.