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Few artists can claim as distinguished and influential a career as El-P. From his days in Company Flow to the founding of iconoclastic label Definitive Jux to the present day, the former El Producto has never been far from a mic, and his influence has never been far from the industry. El-P took the hard New York City sound and dragged it through the mud, crafting atmospheric cuts for his intellectual and exquisitely designed bars. It’s a style that established an entire sound, one that would later be represented by the Def Jux label. This combination of frightfully dark and grimy production with transcendent lyrical skills made El-P and his label-mates subterranean legends, skipping past the Vanilla Underground emoting of their aughts contemporaries at Rhymesayers and forging a brutal underground scene still plied today.
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