The 25 Best El-P Productions

A look at Def Jux founder and underground hip-hop legend El-P's best productions

El-P came from the underground hip-hop scene of the '90s, and while many of those guys are currently floating away into obscurity, somehow El-P—now 38 years old—is as relevant as ever. It makes sense though; he's always been a leader, he's always been a shot caller, and he's always been an innovator. When his first group, Company Flow, had label issues with Rawkus, he went and started his own label, Definitive Jux. The label redefined alternative hip-hop and dropped some underground classics in the process. El-P went on to release a string of solo albums, evolving with each step and managing to retain that paranoid, stressful, beautifully chaotic nature that the NYC producer has become known for.

Definitive Jux lasted about a decade, from 1999 to 2010, and with the closing of that chapter in hip-hop, it would have been reasonable to assume that El-P's career as an artist would also start winding down. Then in 2012, he produced not only one of his best solo albums, Cancer 4 Cure, but also Killer Mike's excellent R.A.P. Music. El-P isn't back, because El-P never really went anywhere.

Now here we are in 2013. Killer Mike and El-P have officially declared themselves as Run The Jewels, and they've released one of the best hip-hop albums of the year (thus far) on Fool's Gold Records. And while Jay-Z partners with Samsung and Drake brags about wanting to sell a million copies in his first week, El-P and Mike decided to give away the Run The Jewels album for free. Some things never change, and thank god, because rap music still needs someone like El-P.

To celebrate the long career of one of the most ground-breaking artists hip-hop has ever seen, here's a look at our favorite 25 El-P productions.

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2. 25. Cannibal Ox - "A B-Boy's Alpha"

Album: The Cold Vein

Year: 2001

One of El-P's greatest strengths as a producer is an understanding of stark juxtaposition, diverse elements coming into contact with one another and creating unexpectedly cohesive combinations. "A B-Boy's Alpha" stands as one of El's finest unusual arrangements, a gorgeous organ and piano forming the root for substantial drums, scratched samples, and a persistent, echoing guitar to accompany. It's a symphony in the key of El-P, simultaneously beautiful and gritty, a musical embodiment of both nostalgia for New York and understanding of the obstacles the city serves up on a daily basis. "A B-Boy's Alpha" shows the depth of El's style, a beat that lends itself to both the hopeful visions and entrapment of poverty that characterize Cannibal Ox's lyrics.

3. 24. Company Flow - "8 Steps to Perfection"

Album: Funcrusher Plus

Year: 1997

A highlight off Funcrusher Plus, "8 Steps to Perfection" is a far cry from the chaotic, more complicated production El-P would favor in the years to come, but it's still one of the grittiest backdrops he's ever made, showing that sometimes less is more. It may sound simple now, but keep in mind this was made back in the late '90s.

4. 23. El-P & Murs - "The Dance"

Album: The End of the Beginning...

Year: 2003

While some might be surprised by the union and continued collaborations of El-P and Killer Mike, El's sound dipped at least a toe into Southern hip-hop's influence well before the two teamed up on Mike's 2012 album R.A.P. Music. When Murs brought his talents temporarily to the Definitive Jux family in 2003, he paired with his new label boss on "The Dance," a song from his fifth solo album The End of the Beginning. Matching skittering drums with pulsing synthesizers at 74 beats per minute provided a glimpse of what Southern hip-hop might sound like filtered through El-P's soot-colored goggles.

The darkest party of 2003, "The Dance" remains one of El-P's most interesting productions, a sonic standout from his output at the time that prefigured elements of the style that have returned him to vogue in the last two years.

5. 22. Aesop Rock - "Train Buffer"

Album: Urban Renewal Program

Year: 2002

Many producers—El-P included—have captured the sound of walking through the streets of New York; few have properly captured what it sounds like to be underground in the Big Apple. On the aptly titled Aesop Rock track "Train Buffer" (a reference to the technique used to remove graffiti from subway cars), El transmutes the feeling of dripping subway tunnels, running rats, rumbling trains, and inky darkness into a staggeringly dense, overbearing beat.

Beginning with an airy, rattling drone–reminiscent of distant trains whirring by–and breaking into a lockstep rhythm and piling on a relentless topsoil of guitars, horn stabs, distorted keys, synthesizers, and bass notes. It's a dizzying composition that takes multiple listens to fully discern, and it may be for El-P diehards only, but "Train Buffer" is one of the producer's most impressively deliberate displays of effective discord.

6. 21. Mr. Lif - "Phantom"

Album: Emergency Rations

Year: 2002

El-P possesses a rare capacity for finding beauty in unlikely, often alien places and components. While comprising a series of synthesizers wholly characteristic of his early 2000s sound, Mr. Lif's "Phantom" is affecting, more melodically inclined than some of El's decidedly discordant arrangements. Moving the drums to more of a supporting role than usual, El allows rousing layers of synths to subtly swell in cycles, giving "Phantom" a sort of aura akin to sunrise after the fall of an atom bomb. It's an effective backdrop for Lif, teasing pockets of emotion out of his usual monotone flow.

7. 20. Masai Bey - "Paper Mache"

Album: Definitive Jux Presents II / vinyl single

Year: 2002

Dissonance, distortion, and force–three words that could readily describe a large portion of El-P's production discography. While the genesis of that sound came during his time with Company Flow, the dawn of Definitive Jux marked a sort of sonic codification, El sharpening his sensibility and bringing together the elements that form the foundation for the production that became synonomous with Def Jux's rise. Masai Bey's "Paper Mache," one of the label's early stand-out singles, features El's signature ominous thump and scraping, robo-voice-synths, built on hard drums and a rumbling bassline. The package give Bey's rhymes–a mixture of bragging and anti-biting emcee anger–an evil gravity, the sound of revolting robots and overcast skies cast against battle rhymes.

8. 19. El-P ft. Vast Aire - "Dr. Hellno And The Praying Mantis"

Album: Fantastic Damage

Year: 2002

While El-P's wicked sense of humor often creeps into his caustic rhymes, it rarely wipes its fingerprints on his production. One of the first glimpses into El's debut solo album, "Dr. Hellno And The Praying Mantis" plays like the soundtrack to a futuristic porno played out entirely in cold, metallic rooms inspired by 1984. "Dr. Hellno" struts along, a steady three note bass figure every bar and chugging march-step rhythm providing a seedy foundation for sporadic sound effects and El-P and Vast Aire's positively lurid rhymes. Its the sound of sleaze, as interpreted by fascistic robots.

9. 18. El-P - "EMG"

Album: I'll Sleep When You're Dead

Year: 2007

While El-P's production often nods to the sounds of '80s hip-hop that he grew up around, rarely do his beats as obviously venture into the thunderous, skeletal sounds pioneered by producers like Rick Rubin. "EMG" splits the difference. Its first half is a booming ode to the old school, drums that conjure Bob James' iconic "Take Me to Mardi Gras" break filtered through El's skull-cracking sensibilities. Halfway through the song, new layers enter the fray. After the second chorus, El's production moves from the mid '80s to the late '80s, approximating a stripped down version of a Bomb Squad production, all before diving into a coda that is patently El-P, an amalgam of his influences with the dark touches that differentiate his style from its fathers.

10. 17. Beck - "Scarecrow (Remix)"

Album: Guerolito

Year: 2005

Because El-P's style draws from so many different genres and eras, he has made an excellent remixer throughout his career, particular when diving outside of the realm of hip-hop. Beck's original "Scarecrow" conjures a slightly souped up take on the singer's earliest material, a Dust Brothers-produced blues-hop romp accompanied by echoing, unnerving strings. Holding over only the latter element and the vocals from Beck's original, El-P incorporates his own sinister orchestra, turning The Dust Brother's rock-leaning thump into a dark-disco stomp, replete with a sparingly used bassline that vaguely recalls Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean" and all the horn stabs and synthesizer flourishes you might expect from El's production. It's a well-paced, fully-loaded recreation, standing aside the original as equally worthy of fans' attention.

11. 16. Cage - "Subtle Art of a Breakup Song"

Album: Hell's Winter

Year: 2005

Producing for Cage is not an easy task, especially during his transition from demented drug fiend to emotional post-demented drug fiend. Cage was great over Necro beats, but let's face it, there's only so much you can do with a Necro beat. El-P offered more depth, and "Sublte Art of a Breakup Song" is a shining example. It sets the backdrop for Cage's nightmarish storytelling, but it's multi-dimensional, communicating not only this crazy rapper with off-the-wall brain tweaks and twisted flows, but feelings, too.

12. 15. Killer Mike - "R.A.P. Music"

Album: R.A.P. Music

Year: 2012

Perhaps R.A.P. Music's most unexpected beat, the eponymous closing track sounds like T.I.'s "What You Know" recast with El-P's tools and sensibilities. Skittering hi-hats and snares give the "R.A.P. Music" its sense of ceaseless forward motion, while a buzzing synth melody approximates an organ–a well-considered accompaniment for Killer Mike's exploration of rap and American black music as religion, the instrument of the church filtered through a fuzz befitting of its new home. As usual, El's sense of the moment is impeccable, the versatility of his toolkit on display, crafting the sort of epic track Mike fans might expect the rapper to end his album with, a brief moment of uplift after eleven gut-punching, paranoid songs.

13. 14. Indelible MC's - "Weight"

Album: Lyricist Lounge Vol. 1

Year: 1998

El-P's complex simplicity at work. Built on relentless drums, snares that sound like punches, synths that sound like pitched down lazer pistols, childish screeches, and DJ scratches, "Weight" splits the difference between two of Funcrusher Plus's sparser signature cuts, "Vital Nerve" and "The Fire in Which You Burn," a sinister play up of the former that doesn't quite approach the hellishness of the latter. "Weight" also hints at the full on sci-fi stylings that characterized El-P's jump from Rawkus-era Company Flow to the dawn of the Definitive Jux era.

14. 13. Aesop Rock & El-P - "We're Famous"

Album: Bazooka Tooth

Year: 2003

For a producer like El-P, it's probably hard to create a beat that lets vocals take center stage. El-P orchestrates chaos, and to rhyme over a modern El-P beat is usually to compete with a wall of noise. But on "We're Famous," Aesop Rock and El-P are talking shit at their most venomous, and El-P cuts back on all the extra and gives those verses room to breathe. The beat is still ominous and heavy-handed, but there's empty space, and it's one of the few times that El-P has proven that he's got a skill that a lot of listeners probably doubted he had: Restraint. It's exactly what this track needed.

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15. 12. Run the Jewels - "DDFH"

Album: Run The Jewels

Year: 2013

With the release of Run The Jewels, El-P's joint offering with recent collaborator Killer Mike, we were once again exposed to El's colorfully innovative production palette. Yet while much of the producer's signature futuristic, minor-key sound remained intact, El dialed it down just a touch for this record, crafting a more accessible sonic schoolyard to match the playful one-upsmanship and and bragging in the duo's verses. There is, perhaps, no better example of this style at work than on "DDFH." The track opens with dramatic synths and pulsating percussion before seamlessly transitioning to a jittery, upbeat chorus. It's a perfectly manufactured progression that shows that while El-P may be having fun with this record, he's certainly not fucking around.

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16. 11. Cage - "Good Morning"

Album: Hell's Winter

Year: 2005

Just as he did for Cannibal Ox and Mr. Lif, El-P provided Cage with the perfect introductory track for the rapper's Def Jux debut Hell's Winter. Starting in silence and slowly emerging with a heavily effected vocal singing "good morning, New York," "Good Morning" blazes out of the ether with El's blazing take on funk-rock, the sound of groups like Funkadelic filtered through his grimy sensibility. Though as intricately layered as any of his other beats, there's an anthemic straightforwardness to "Good Morning" that display's El's excellent situational awareness as a producer, serving up a fittingly rousing introduction to the rollercoaster of an album that follows.

17. 10. Company Flow - "Linda Tripp"

Album: N/A

Year: 1999

When Anticon mastermind and avant-garde rapper Sole attacked El-P on "Dear Elpee" for a perceived diss, El responding with expected fury. Laying out his typical punchy drums, El uncovered one of the eeriest samples of his production career, a wordless vocal loop that invokes dancing shadows, an unsettling backdrop for lyrical venom. Though the haunting take on El's dusty boom-bap set the stage for a one of a kind diss track, his two masterstrokes on "Linda Tripp" were the weaving of samples into his assault–a vocal sample croons "he needs me, he needs me" over and over, a humorous jab–and the use of taped phone conversations between Sole, El, and Company Flow DJ Mr. Len, chopped and arranged to embarrassing perfection.

18. 9. Killer Mike - "Reagan"

Album: R.A.P. Music

Year: 2012

Few unions in music in the last few years have been as unexpectedly fitting as that of Killer Mike and El-P. There's been something about El-P's recent output that feels like he's giving less of a fuck, allowing him to truly just let the music grow and make these heavy statements. On Killer Mike's "Reagan," El-P makes sure that he creates an epic sonic base that allows Mike to drop this heavy mental on Reagan, politics, and how he sees the current establishment. El knows how to accentuate Mike's delivery and message, letting piano stabs and atmospheres go drum-less for the first verse, allowing Mike's intricate lyrics hit that much harder. Midway through the second verse, it's time to stand up and revolt, and that's when the understated drums kick in. This isn't just rap music, it's the soundtrack to a revolution.

19. 8. El-P - "Accidents Don't Happen"

Album: Fantastic Damage

Year: 2002

In a career filled with menacing beats, perhaps none is as brutal as "Accidents Don't Happen." Droning static, careening dial-up modem synths, unflinching bass, and dusty, snapping snares cast "Accidents" accidents as the score to a dystopian nightmare, an aggressively abrasive sound that challenges the listener to stay, all the while assembling an odd order out of its grating puzzle pieces. Paranoia personified and perhaps the clearest musical articulation of El-P's pitch-black futurism.

20. 7. Cannibal Ox - "Scream Phoenix"

Album: The Cold Vein
Year: 2002

El-P's gift for evoking mood is largely unparalleled amongst his peers, in the underground or otherwise. While that mood is usually one of melancholy or rage, El's versatility and depth of musical knowledge afford him the ability to craft unexpected soundscapes that still fit firmly within his canon. "Scream Phoenix," the closing track on Cannibal Ox's The Cold Vein, comes on the heels of fourteen near-relentlessly bleak tracks, an album born of the grim world it observes and can't escape. Grabbing a series of Phillip Glass samples and building an astral choir atop sparse drums and claps–the closest an El-P beat has ever come to taking listeners to church–the producer crafts a moment of pure uplift, a sparkling testament to resiliance in the face of all odds.

21. 6. Company Flow - "The Fire In Which You Burn"

Album: Funcrusher Plus
Year: 1997

The pounding snare heavy drums. The eerie sitar that rises from the ether. The screech that, from the song's opening seconds, announces entry into an abrasive, relentless world. If Company Flow's mission statement was to always remain "independent as fuck," perhaps no beat serves as a better soundtrack than "The Fire In Which You Burn," the blistering posse cut from Funcrusher Plus that serves as a direct counterpoint to the glitzy shiny-suit era hip-hop that dominated airwaves in 1997. Though raw–like many of the beats on Funcrusher, "Fire" sounds like some sort of roughly stitched together sonic Frankenstein–El-P's production possesses a sort of horrifying kinetic energy, the sound of an opium trip in a dark alley heard through hungover ears. Grim and thumping, "Fire" is a microcosm of why Company Flow was so exciting to underground fans when they blasted their way onto the scene.

22. 5. El-P - "$ VIC/FTL (Me and You)"

Album: Cancer for Cure
Year: 2012

Early in El-P's solo production career, many of his beats bore the influence of prog rock, with blistering guitar solos, dense walls of sound, and generally unruly runtimes. Though he's moved away from the sample-based chaos of Def Jux's genesis, El seems to have internalized the lessons and concepts of rocks oft maligned, experimental subgenre. On "$ VIC/FTL (Me and You)," the stunning closer to his 2012 album Cancer for Cure, El-P crafts a shifting, densely layered production that feels like a full film score in itself, sprawling across distinctive sections like miniature movements, persistent drums, bass, synth stabs, and wails giving way to an eerily gorgeous closing two and a half minutes. It bears many of El's sonic signatures, but, perhaps more impressively, it suggests years of influence internalized and converted into original thought.

23. 4. El-P - "T.O.J."

Album: Fantastic Damage
Year: 2002

With a background in jazz (his father, Harry Meline, was a jazz pianist) and even an occasional toe dipped in the genre, it's no surprise that some of El-P's productions whould deal in unusual time signatures and beautiful melodies. Coming late on Fantastic Damage, "T.O.J." is a letter to a lost love, syncopated drums set against sparse bass and what sounds like distant guitar, fittingly embodying the title's meaning "time out of joint" (also the name of a Phillip K. Dick novel). As the first verse fades, El reveals the stunning, symphonic second half of the beat, a dizzying array of samples set atop forceful, lock-step drums. "T.O.J." displays the breadth of El's style and influences, taking cues from wildly different genres to create something uniquely his own.

24. 3. Company Flow - "Vital Nerve"

Album: Funcrusher Plus
Year: 1997

Because El-P has become known for his densely packed production, his ability to scale back the proceedings and a few elements shine through often goes underrated. "Vital Nerve," one of the standouts from Funcrusher Plus, builds on a thumping, dusty drum break, a three note synthesizer melody, an occasional sample of a classic drum break, a horn sample during a late chorus, a few organ notes, and a sample that screeches "New York is Number 1 today." To list the components is to overcomplicate the proceedings: "Vital Nerve" succeeds on the strength of its heavy percussion and hypnotic three note melody. Though it bears some resemblance to beats El made after his tenure with Company Flow (notably Aesop Rock collaboration "We're Famous" and Esoteric diss "7700 Years to Date"), "Vital Nerve" is cuttingly reserved, a breath of fresh air that stands out in his catalog.

25. 2. El-P - "Deep Space 9mm"

Album: Fantastic Damage
Year: 2002

In charting El-P's post Company Flow development, Fantastic Damage single "Deep Space 9mm" remains one of the strongest barometers, a re-statement of purpose that grafted El's new tricks onto his core philosophy, definining the sound he'd come to describe as dusty digital. Stuffed with horn stabs, careening synths, unexpected samples, relentless drums and enough low-end to remind you that rap is best experienced at loud volumes in a residential neighborhood, "Deep Space 9mm" serves as a strong encapsulation of El's early 2000s output. Claustrophobic, cacophonous, and reminiscent of the past without being stuck in nostalgia, "Deep Space 9mm" is purposeful sonic assault.

26. 1. Cannibal Ox - "Iron Galaxy"

Album: The Cold Vein

Year: 2001

In looking at El-P's production output at the turn of the century, two distinctive styles emerge: one, the often-abrasive, chaotic update of old school that he developed with Company Flow; the other, a cinematic sound that conjured graying dystopias, grafting his hard-hitting, old school-inspired percussion onto wide-screen sci-fi melodies. Though much of Cannibal Ox's seminal album The Cold Vein features many iterations of the latter sound, the duo's debut single "Iron Galaxy" is perhaps its clearest articulation. Built on bubbling synthesizer samples, distant guitars, and The Honey Drippers' iconic "Impeach the President" break, "Iron Galaxy" feels like the introductory sequence to a film about existence in a futuristic Children of Men-esque ghetto, a fitting representation of the paranoia that would grip 9/11 era New York (in spite of the fact that "Iron Galaxy" preceded the fateful events of that Tuesday morning by almost a year).

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