The Overly Dramatic Truth

El-P’s Fantastic Damage was a damn-near perfect hip-hop album. I had that record in rather heavy rotation for a couple years. So, as you can imagine, I was pretty stoked to get my advance copy of I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead, El-P’s sophomore solo effort, in the mail several months back. After getting over the irritating-as-fuck anti-piracy messages that Def Jux soils all its press advances with, some guy saying “This promo belongs to Matthew Newton” three to four times per song, I gave the album a rather thorough listen. My intial reaction was disappointment, I just didn’t like it. However, with so much lackluster work coming out of the Def Jux camp in recent years, I unfortunately wasn’t surprised.

But after giving my ears some time to cool down, I tried this record again the other day. Once again, the anti-piracy messages were driving me crazy, making it almost impossible to listen. But I started to feel a little bit of nostalgia listening to a few of the tracks, mainly a single called “The Overly Dramatic Truth.” While overall this record doesn’t shine nearly as bright as Fantastic Damage, I can respect El-P’s attempts to push his sound in a new direction and lace it with even more emotional content in his lyrics (something he has been more fully embracing in his solo efforts post-Company Flow era). 

Check out the clip above. El-P performs “The Overly Dramatic Truth” on this past Monday’s Conan O’Brien Show.