hip.hop :: interview :: El-P

by Jessie Nelson

Hip hop and jazz have crossed paths intermittently since the early 80s, when samples of saxophones and funky drum beats began to invade Run DMC and KRS One tracks. The neo-soul movement in the early to mid 90s brought jazz and hip hop closer still when artists with jazz backgrounds and hip hop soul began to create a fusion of the two, creating an intricate, organic sound that gave jazz new life and hip hop artistic credibility. Avant-guard jazz, most recently put in the spotlight with Matthew Shipp and Thirsty Ear Records, has become a hybrid of traditional and neo-soul with a dash of electronic beats thrown in for good measure.

El-P, a hip hop producer with a jazz background, takes to the engineering booth with an open ear and an open mind, letting musicians from The Blue Series Continuum, a core group of classically trained jazz cats, bobble and weave as they please through break beats, jazz, hardcore funk grooves and electronic beats. El-P lets his musicality manifest through reconfiguring what the artists lay down and tweaking the music to the point where its got nothing else to do but groove. The sextet, which reads like a who’s who of avant-garde jazz: Roy Campbell; trumpet, Daniel Carter; reeds, William Parker; bass, Matthew Shipp; piano, Steve Swell; trombone, and Guillermo E. Brown on drums, does the rest.

Growing up between Brooklyn and Manhattan, the jazz bug ran in the family starting with his father and eventually trickling down to El-P. “My father, who’s singing on the record, is a jazz musician and jazz pianist. I grew up playing piano and saxophone.” he explains. Hip Hop arrived and opened up his eyes, pulling him toward the beats that evolved from his father’s music. “I gave that up in my early teens…hip hop sort of took over for me. My music background is really hip hop and trace elements of soaking up 10 years of piano lessons and being around musicians.” He began listening to the early Def Jam roster in junior high, and remembers the time when hip hop was very pure. “… Mel e Mel, Fat Boys, what I consider to be the golden age of hip hop music, that ended up being my personal musical love, growing up in Brooklyn and in New York City, very real, very tangible , it related a lot to kids…” he muses.

Having been one of the lucky ones who hasn’t had to work a day job since he put out his first EP with Company Flow in 1996, El-P’s entry into the business came from not wanting to work for anyone but himself. “That was just my own sort of self-awareness of how I wanted to be involved. I’m a musician, not a business man. The business thing came out of what I considered necessity, to keep my pride, be a grown man. I realized early in my career intellectually I didn’t agree with the way commerce and music were mixing. I didn’t want to be involved with being subservient to some sort of corporation when it comes down to making music.” he states pointedly.

El-P’s theory on the marriage of jazz and hip hop comes off like that of a scholar teaching a university class on music, but his perspective stems from taking chances and risks in an industry that has prided itself on sucking the blood out of real artistry. “I think there’s a valid connection, a valid perspective that can be brought from any musician’s perspective…It’s very obvious to me that it all boils down to elements and direct music influences. Emotion and feeling and ideas are often very similar” he says. He doesn’t claim to be an authority on jazz or hip hop, he just relates his experience and is quite honest about the fact that this project only happened due to being asked because the idea was nerve-wracking to him. He also took on the project because he knew it was essential to his growth as a producer/musician. “I come from straight hip hop, the only thing I said is that I’m a producer, have been collecting records all my life, being a student and a fan in general, my correlating with jazz, [the] reason I agreed to do the recording was not because I had the skill to make a jazz record, I am very aware of my limitations as a producer,I was scared to do a jazz record, I was asked to do it. First of all, I know how hypercritical the jazz community is and how protective they are of jazz. Me putting my hands on a jazz record, it’s not going to be a normal thing. I connected with the players, I liked them and the way they were approaching it, they wanted to get involved with some different ideas and I figured for better or worse I said ‘fuck it throw my two cents in’ and that was a challenge to me. I consider my self a student of music, the only way to learn, to grow, to understand is to take risks regardless of whether you fall flat on your face.”

From the start, there was no real game plan for this project. The vibe in the recording studio was that of a live jazz session and everyone on the gig was at the top of their game. “Matthew Ship is bent on breaking jazz out of whatever funk that it’s in. These guys as musicians. They just want to make sure the music that they love grows, not just some sort of nostalgia , I met them through him, didn’t meet the players till we went to the studio to do it, it was really cool…these guys are basically free jazz players. The best way that I can be involved in itwasn’t going to be me writing music for them. They don’t really read music anymore so I brought music in and they improvised through it. I just picked apart everything and created new songs out of everything, it was hard but it worked. I could take different elements from 15 minute jam sessions and throw them together in different way… they are sort of reconstructions. I felt that was my task - to recreate. The actual live sessions were incredible, so I tried to make a record that sounded organic” he explains.

And he succeeded.

Image courtesy of http://pistolwhippinike.net/pictures_from_the_galaxy_club.htm

2004 1-42 Online