Too Many People In One Place!

I just heard El-P's new album, "I'll Sleep When You're Dead" and can I just say, GODDAMMIT!!! Did have to take three months to get the best hip-hop album of the year?El-P has cultivated a reputation for diggin his heels in on left field and making a point of never ever leaving that little hip-hop niche of superintelligent verbose backpacking rap that he's cut out for himself and the Def Jux crew. In a way it must be nice to be free to do whatever the hell you want because 1) people expect it from you, and 2) you're so far out there everyone just leaves you the hell alone to do what you do. On the other hand, like the kid in The Sixth Sense who sees dead people, it can be a little hard on a guy who has insight, however dark and disturbing, into the larger picture because it comes with great responsibility. You either find a way to express that insight, or destroy yourself trying. Thank the gods that El-P found a constructive way to focus that energy.Fantastic Damage is probably one of the best hip-hop albums of all time, if only because it was so fucking timely. It expressed in all its sound and fury the hurt, isolation, and paranoia everyone felt directly after 911. I love that album to death and would put it up against any other for contender in the top ten greatest of all time. The new one is, at times, even better than Fan Dam. Everyone's got their favorites by now, but I like the collaborations a lot. I'm not usually a fan of genre-mixing just for the hell of it, but hte collaborators El-P chose for this project seemed very well thought out. The seven-minute-plus, art-hop, album opener clearly had the Mars Volta written all over it, but I think that El-P's twisted humour and larger world context in his lyrics actually make MV sound better. When I first heard that Trent Reznor was gonna be on this I was skeptical. I thought the choice was a little obvious and commercial for the head Jukkie to take on, but "Flyentology" works in ways it has no right to. El-P outdoes Trent in the buzzsaw industrial wasteland soundscapes he delivers to your ears and Reznor's scratchy vocals on the chorus crawling in and out of the wall of noise like a roach on the kitchen floor is spot on. Just a lovely dark hiphop track.I can say a lot more about the album, El-P, and the dogged determination of Def Jux to push the boundaries of hiphop but I'll only only say now that you have to BUY THIS ALBUM. There's no getting around it. Even if you don't like hiphop. The music is far enough away from hip-hop proper that you guys would like it, too. So GO BUY THIS ALBUM.Also, on another note, here's a link to the animated video for "Flyentology" as well as Adult Swim's, " Definitive Swim" compilation with everyone from Camu Tao to Hangar 18 to Mr. Lif and so on. Oh, the compilation of mp3s is FREE. Yes, I said FREE. So get that now, too. http://www.adultswim.com/williams/music/defswim/index.html