El-P “Cancer 4 Cure”
Published in Mills Record Company, The Blog. Tags: Music.
“It’s like a fresh start on a new world,” chants El-P in the chorus of Cancer 4 Cure‘s “Works Every Time.” In some ways the entire album represents a fresh start for the Brooklyn-based MC and producer, though the same could be said of practically everything the tirelessly inventive Producto has signed his name to this past decade. Jeff Weiss rightly calls Cancer 4 Cure both “reinvention and inversion” — all the more fitting given how refreshing a direction the album takes musically, with its sporadic beats always appearing ready to pounce while constantly lurking beneath the captivating flow of the Gonzo lyricist’s anti-rhyme scheme. Balanced by the likes of Killer Mike, Danny Brown, and Despot, Cancer 4 Cure represents “a triumph of imagination and intelligence,” with the urgency behind the music felt all the way from the progressively intense electronics of “Request Denied” through to the slow fade of the album’s final split-part track, “$ Vic/FTL.”
[This article first appeared at Mills Record Company.]