A good artist moves with the times. The signature sound remains, but evolves and adapts just enough to stay relevant as the years go by. Get stuck in a time warp and your followers will move on without you, no matter how perfect your best years were. That thing about Madonna ‘constantly reinventing’ herself is one of the most clichéd lines in music journalism for sure, but there is some truth in it, and it’s the reason she’s been successful since the early 80s.
Hip-hop is a genre sometimes more reluctant to change than others. Complacency can set in fast, with many artists happy to ride their legacy for as long as they can, refusing to switch lanes and find the next generation of listeners. It works for a small few, but explains why many of the most gifted rappers have faded into obscurity. Those that are still active can just about carve out a living from past glory, but it’s a hard grind.
If you evolve with the music, you can have a long and fruitful career full of financial and critical success, and not many rappers over the last 20 years have done that better than Jaime Meline, aka El-P.
Moving with the times is one thing, but the really creative artists are those who challenge us by taking a gamble each time they move. Madonna has no doubt achieved longevity, but these days, her way of reinventing herself seems to be to merely follow what is successful at the time. Lady Gaga and Rihanna were obviously inspired by Madonna, but Madonna is now more likely to be found copying what they do. To be considered truly exceptional, making a few tweaks is not enough; you must get ahead of the times too.
Artists like Bob Dylan and David Bowie have stayed critically acclaimed for years by always moving on, but at the same time by taking risks with their music. Some have been misfires, others successful, but each one has helped maintain their relevance to older fans while also introducing them to new ones.
And this is exactly how El-P has managed to elevate himself to the status of hip-hop legend, with distinct chapters to his career. First came the Company Flow era, where, as part of the three-man crew, El helped to shape a phenomenal era of hip-hop music in the late 90s. Their Funcrusher Plus album stands today as one of the genre’s best, driven by Meline’s dusty beats and intricate flow. It was angry and raw, with a healthy distain towards the mainstream music business that matched the movement independent labels like Rawkus and Fondle’em were creating.
When the wind changed and the end came for Rawkus, the rest of the labels and for Company Flow as a group, El-P changed things up again, starting a new chapter as the head of his own Indy label. Def Jux picked up the pieces left over from Fondle’em and others, but this time the music seemed to be coming from a place even further beyond the fringes of the mainstream, heading towards a territory that would soon be labeled as ‘alternative hip-hop’.
The unnecessary pigeon-holing by the critics was largely irrelevant though. The music was fresh, exciting, and hip-hop to the bone, with classic material by a diverse group of artists that included Cannibal Ox, Mr Lif, MURS, Aesop Rock, and El-P himself.
When Def Jux suffered the same fate as the labels that had come before, Meline moved with the times again by starting a new chapter, this time forming a coalition with an unlikely partner, Atlanta rapper Killer Mike. The success of Run the Jewels has again been due at least in part thanks to a willingness to take risks, and it seems to be paying off again. Even financially this time.
The El-P of 2015 seems contempt, but not complacent. There are no doubt other chapters to come, but for now at least he seems to have found a place to stay for a while. Age also helps, and now he’s reached 40, what we are seeing is an older, wiser El-P. In 2013 he appeared on the brilliant Rhythm Roulette series from Mass Appeal, just as Run the Jewels were starting to make some noise. What we got then was an older chapter of Jaime Meline: pissed-off and sweary, smoking cigarettes and drinking beer, all while working his magic in the studio. It was what you’d imagine a Co Flow session would have been like, some 15 years earlier.
Twelve months later, now promoting Run the Jewels, the El-P we saw and heard in videos, magazine interviews and on podcasts was a new, more mature and eloquent man. Neither persona is fake, but instead simply two different chapters of the same person. The man in the Mass Appeal video was still angry with the industry, but the man a year later was less so, and happy to be considered an elder statesman in a music genre as fickle as they come.