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El-P used to be in Company Flow, an NYC group that earned respect in the late '90s before dissolving. These days, he's an entrepreneur and producer: His label, Definitive Jux, consistently churns out shockers, and he's made beats for some of hip-hop's most adventuresome. El-P's out there, and he's got company.
On Fantastic Damage, El-P occupies the roles of producer and MC, and he kills. As an MC, he spits paragraphs, not stanzas. Yes, he rhymes, but he's got a peculiar internal clock. Seldom does he squeeze to fit his lyrics into the obvious rhythm; rather, he evenly balances lyrical needs and beat flow -- if he needs space to finish a thought, he finds it -- so his tracks roll at their own strange pace.
But El-P is better at producing than rapping. His tracks are uniformly insane. Dungeon drones battle with synthetic beeps. He inserts ear-splittingly high frequencies just to fuck with your head, couples them with deep bass, adds human moans to beats and rhythms that jump and reorganize nearly every four measures. El-P hates stasis, so while the Diddys of the world take the interstate to the end of a song, El-P cruises the winding thoroughfares.
Like most hip-hop records, though, it's too goddamn long; there's filler, and the record occasionally loses its momentum. Were Fantastic Damage 20 minutes shorter, it'd be perfect; as it stands, though, it's merely fantastic.