Back in '97, El-P released Funcrusher Plus with his seminal group Company Flow. The album's tense, hypercreative backdrops laid such a sturdy foundation for the underground hip-hop world that it still echoes five years later, and has since been widely recognized as one of the genre's greatest achievements. Unfortunately, after only a few additional singles and an instrumental album, Company Flow was officially sent off last year with a blistering farewell show in Boston. And while El-P's remained busy with production work (most notably Cannibal Ox's The Cold Vein) and running a record label (the estimable Def Jux), heads have been hungry for the man to step back up to the mic.
Now, after a series of frustrating delays, El-P's finally kicked out his first solo LP and exceeded the expectations of everyone who anxiously awaited its arrival. Fantastic Damage is an unrelenting, end-to-end burner that not only heralds the resurrection of El-P, but also provides a milestone for post-millennial underground hip-hop. The music is carefully constructed and sonically intricate. Distorted guitars, cacophonous, high-pitched ringing, and spiraling screams comprise its musical motifs. Lyrically, El-P eschews hip-hop's straightforward style for fits of associative word clusters (a la Kool Keith, or even early Pavement) that sound like a freestyle battle between a Marxist pamphlet and a technical manual. "Motherfucker, does this sound abstract?" El-P howls on one early track. "I hope that it sounded more confusing than that."
Like Funcrusher Plus, the themes on this album are predominantly political. "I am not a mechanism borne for the state," he spits, "I had to be trained." In "Dead Disnee," he fantasizes about visiting a post-apocalyptic Disney World-- a bleak prospect considering recent threats from the al Qaeda network. El-P even takes a sharp-witted stab at the Star Wars phenomenon on Fantastic Damage's title track, charasmatically ranting, "Operate catapults and goosestep over the innocent/ Vagrant of Reganomics phase with books to burn at the pod race.../ This is that Bronx magic, without Lucas Arts graphics/ Crayon colored green monsters and horrible child actors."
But while anti-capitalist anthems have always been his specialty, El-P's greatest accomplishments on this album are his newfound lyrical abilities, at once emotionally resonant and conceptually creative and consistent. On "Stepfather Factory," he fuses his personal and political rage and delivers the record's most fully realized concept song. Affecting the voice of a CEO for a corporation manufacturing abusive guardians, El-P softens his caustic howl as he rhymes over a dark, looming beat that vividly conjures a corporately oppressive near-future.
If Sly Stone phoned up Stockhausen for a presidentially mandated collaboration with 10,000 hours of government-granted studio time at Abbey Road, they still couldn't have crafted a soundscraper this abrasive, complex, and primal. An infectious retro-futurism informs the parting beat of "The Nang, The Front, The Bush and The Shout"; the chorus of "Dead Disnee" is what Devo might sound like after spending a few days spun on PCP and meth; and "Lazerfaces' Warning" approximates industrial circus funk. Then there are the guest appearances: while Aesop Rock comes on with a surprisingly disappointing verse, Vast Aire drops another nugget of noir swagger on the "Dr. Hellno and the Praying Mantis."
As tight as Fantastic Damage is, subtlety is definitely not its strong suit, and its esoteric and indulgent moments might have been better executed with a little smoothing over. Still, with a sphere of oppression and violence hanging over this country, El-P's trenchant examination of our environment and inner space is like manna in a desert of irony. No doubt, El-P has delivered both what we'd hoped for and what we need right now. This is his statement for these times, and it's one of the finest hip-hop records I've heard all year.
