When the President Goes to School: El-P Aims Steady

Definitive Jux kingpin El-P builds a gotham wasteland in I'll Sleep When You're Dead. Living up to his name, El-Producto graces his second solo album with dense, cerebral production that paints a swampy, blood-thick marsh of sound fit for the dystopian subjects of his rhymes. Songs of speed, soldiers and drinking piss paint a wretched New York crawling with unjust killings, poverty and torture. Here there are no heroes.

While the album features collaborative work from Trent Reznor, Cat Power, Aesop Rock, and The Mars Volta, is hardly bends to mashup trends of the day. Instead, El-P fits each influence snugly into the album's many fire pits, making few concessions to self-referential ironies. His skills as a producer colour the album's foreground, where venomous beats drown out-and perhaps compensate for-relatively flat cadences. The technical skill El lacks as an MC is countered by a charismatic optimism carried through the record, represented by brief sunny breaks that signify pride for both this project and Definitive Jux as a whole.

I'll Sleep When You're Dead is a sharply honest, dark record that descends into a murderous bedlam otherwise parodied-and thus, largely avoided-by other rappers. Critics have called it a difficult disc, but the unflinching exactitude of El-P's lyrics renders it one of the most important hip hop albums of the year. Jackie Wong