El-P – I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead (2007)
Best Tracks: Up All Night, the League of Extraordinary Nobodies, Habeas Corpus ( Draconian Love)
Weakest Tracks: Dear Sirs, Run the Numbers
Another Hip-Hop album though in somewhat of a different style than Open Mike Eagle. I found this album more enjoyable. I thought there were some pretty nice uses of sampling. I was still trying to place the sample on Drive and now I remember where I had heard something similar, Fatboy Slim’s Weapon of Choice (I assume that too was also a sample).
I liked the music especially. I tend to pay less attention to the lyrics unless the language is especially crude or violent. I don’t think this album crossed the line there.
I really liked the line in Habeas Corpus (I found love on a prison ship). El-P seems to be demented at time in a Weird Al sort of way I guess. Overall, there were really no tracks that I would call absolute classics, but the poorer tracks aren’t the worst I’ve heard either. In other words, the album is fairly consistent.
I bounced from giving this album a 6 or a 7 (I am saying I like it), but I really couldn’t decide whether the better parts rated or the lesser parts took the album down a little. So I’ll go halfway with my assessment.
6.5/10 (the Word has spoken
)