There's something in the German language that makes you feel like you're getting a hug and a backstab at the same time.
El-PI think that everyone who does music, and everyone who does art, or everyone who decides at a young age that they're gonna do that, is someone who feels like an outsider. The world is not really set up for that.
El-PI think Trump is indicative of a larger problem. It existed way before him, it is our generation's issue that all over the world people are and have been suffering from despotic power figures who want nothing more to control than help the people they claim to represent. The difference being is a lot of people had not been paying much attention prior because it wasn't directly impacting them.
El-PI hope that people take away hope, maybe not in an obvious sense, but in the form of hearing somebody who's genuinely fighting to stay above water. And in that fight, there's hope. In that fight, maybe there's positivity.
El-PI do these records. All of these ideas that I have, that I put out there, that inspire me to write, are a purging in a lot of ways. I have to expel them in order for myself to walk around and actually smile and be a regular, or a living, person.
El-PAny issue and any problem, no matter what height you look at it from, no matter how much you extend past the first fractal, it's still a fractal of something that emanates from within your consciousness - from within the human consciousness. And it'll move on and manifest itself externally, and then those are what we pick up as societal ills. But all these battles we're fighting are internal. For me, it's reconciling hope with dread and trying to cut out some place in my mind where my heart can be protected a little bit.
El-PI am making art. It's not a job that you've gotta show up to and fill in your slot. This is a dream come true. You get the opportunity to say something, to make a piece of art and hang it on the wall forever. Sometimes you're gonna have to take your time.
El-PMy relationship to Brooklyn is probably the relationship that any 40-year-old man has to his hometown, which is that this is where I live, this what I know, yet it's different, it's changed. My fascination with the city has maybe subsided and now it's just where I'm from, where I live.
El-PPeople are very afraid. In my country, you had a corrupt party who sabotaged an amazing candidate Bernie Sanders who was stronger than the other. Had Sanders faced Trump even more young people - from black millennials to the gay and lesbian community - would have voted because he represented them at his core. Fear drove the American vote, because if you're choosing from two devils like Hillary and Trump then you're more likely to end up picking the one who is cooler and makes you laugh.
El-PThe only thing an artist is useful for, and the only reason why we don't just line 'em up against the wall and shoot them, is because, at their best, they're the reflection of our lives, that most regular people can't even afford to think about.
El-PI think you get to a certain point in your life and where you grew up stops reminding you of when you grew up. Everything changes, everything metamorphosizes.
El-PThere's a segment of this world, there's a mind state that's permeated the intellectual consciousness of this world that comes from a certain type of people that looks at me and you and your average individual as a problem - like a blight on an otherwise potential paradise, something that needs to be cured.
El-PI couldn't really be a part of high school, because I have a terrible time doing things that I don't want to do. I'm not good at it. It's not even like, I'm a rebel. I'm just bad at it, you know?
El-PMy father was a musician, and I've always loved writing. I grew up in New York City during a time when hip hop music was surrounding you with the hip hop culture, and it felt natural. I was a really huge fan of the music.
El-PJust when you think you should start accepting that you're becoming an adult, all your childhood fantasies come true.
El-PIf you ask me what people want from me, they would probably just want me to be true to what I'm doing.
El-PIf you are a good writer you use your life experience to do something different than someone who is 20-years-old can do. That is where you get your power. That is our power as a group. I am not trying to make the same music I made 10 years ago.
El-PMaybe my great struggle, and it's probably not anything different from too many other people, but it certainly is what drives the music, is a hugely internal one.
El-PAt a young age, I really wanted to make music and make my own sort of thing. I'm sure if it wasn't music, it would have been writing, or it would have been maybe painting. I just always had the drive to try and make something with my hands and to just pull something out of myself and shape it and see it in front of me, if that makes any sense.
El-PYou've gotta be an outsider a little bit to shake yourself loose from the mill, the "machine." In order to even cut the space in your life to pursue what most people literally cannot afford a moment to pursue. So, yeah. I think that not only is that the role of the artist, but it might be a requirement.
El-PI like being a rapper and cursing and getting paid. But at some point I feel like I'm going to be an old angry ass man, who is going to run the school board or city council.
El-PThe advancement of style is the cornerstone of hip hop. There is no correct or conservative way to make rap music. Rap is and must remain the answer, the alternative, to the conservative approach of making music.
El-PI would feel pretty embarrassed if I was doing what I do and I wasn't at least attempting the eloquent translation of the human experience in some way.
El-PEveryone just wants to feel good, and I don't think that all music is designed to make you feel good. Sometimes it's to make you feel amped, or angry, or nervous. I was listening to a lot of Public Enemy when I made the record.
El-PNo doubt, there are times when I'm like "We have all gotten really used to saying whatever the f - k we want to say," and it's something that I really take seriously, whatever that may be.
El-PYou can't turn back technology and you can't turn back authoritarianism. You can't have one hand in the dirt and one hand in the crystal clear water and say that you're clean. That's just the way it is.
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