Editor’s Be aware: This story was initially revealed in November 2019 and has been up to date for comprehensiveness.
Again in November 2019, El-P guested on Talib Kweli’s weekly Individuals’s Social gathering podcast.
In a clip from the episode, the Run The Jewels producer deconstructs his method to beat-making, proudly carrying the torch for “noisy” East Coast rap composition. With Kweli as his rap historian sounding board, the producer traces the model to Ice Dice’s post-NWA embrace of The Bomb Squad and Rick Ruben’s work with Run DMC, whose everyman aesthetic was pivotal to RTJ’s onstage presentation.
He additionally credited Dice’s debut album, AmeriKKKa’s Most Wished, as an important affect on the formation of Run The Jewels with Killer Mike, a session he admits he was initially reluctant to tackle. “One of many issues we linked on instantly, simply on some rap shit, was when Ice Dice left NWA, went to the East Coast and instantly attached with the noisiest, funkiest, most loopy, manufacturing squad,” the producer notes.
Since then, EL-P has joined his idol as a Grammy-winner. Because of his manufacturing assitance on Killer Mike’s solo effort, Michael, El-P took residence a Grammy in 2024.
Watch an excerpt from El-P and Talib Kweli’s Individuals’s Social gathering interview beneath.
