I’LL SLEEP WHEN YOU’RE DEAD - EL-P
Talk about bleak. El-P’s latest could have been a soundtrack to Alfonso Cuaron’s 2006 film “Children of Men,” delivering a near apocalyptic vision of a not-so-distant war-torn future. The sci-fi nightmares of 2002’s “Fantastic Damage” are present here, but now they hit a little closer to home. Even a cruise around Brooklyn on “Drive” is cause for a panic attack, as the car isn’t looking out at the world so much as shielding the MC from it (”You call them windows, I call them asbestos-lesseners”). Elsewhere, on the almost romantic “Habeas Corpses,” boy meets “prisoner 247290,” and the two are forced to “live inside each other’s head.” But he’s not angry so much as wistful, telling a young girl, “You deserve the ignorance and bliss that I still wish I had.” Fans know El-P lost his innocence years ago, and listeners are still benefiting.
