El-P Quotes

My whole mode is to do what I want to do and let people understand me through that.

I believe that if you're an artist, it's like a gift. If you can do this for a living and you can be involved in it, it's something that you can't ignore. It's the chance for you to have a voice and create something from yourself.

I'm trying to consciously evolve myself. I have no delusions of grandeur.

Why should I be sober when God is so clearly dusted out his mind?

You'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.

I 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.

There's a responsibility as a musician to do the music that you want to hear.

Trying to separate myself from my instincts of pessimism and cut out and define what it is that I really do love, what I'm here to be, why I'm here, and what I think is worth being alive for and fighting for. And those things change, but I think that that's something I am always chasing.

Any 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.

Just when you think you should start accepting that you're becoming an adult, all your childhood fantasies come true.

Oh my god what am I doing with my life?

The fact of the matter is, if you're not putting out stuff that people are feeling, then your record label doesn't mean a goddamn thing.

We're fighting internal struggles, I am the cancer for my own cure.

I'm not really one of these people who's been known for particularly hopeful sentiments.

People 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.

Most people aren't happy about being consistent and staying at the same place for years. People want forward progress and motion.

I'm a fan of some of the hyphy stuff. Hyphy has been going on a lot longer than the press has been recognizing it.

Change is a direct element of hip-hop. That's the whole thing with style.

Everyone just wants to feel good, and I don't think that all music is designed to make you feel good.

I 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.

There are two types of people, two types of performers: Performers who know how to keep a show going literally when the power is gone and performers who haven't had that much experience and will panic and freak out and don't know what to do.

At the core of everything I do, is not my ambition but my desire to make music. Somewhere along the line I stumbled onto something that was bigger, different than anything I had ever imagined, which was actually being involved with other people. I just don't live the average artist's life.

There's something in the German language that makes you feel like you're getting a hug and a backstab at the same time.

I try to take a snapshot of who I am now, who I am becoming, as opposed to who I was when I was first starting to make records. I'm not trying to make boring adult music, but I try to make music more reflective of what matters to me now.

I 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.

The 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.

My problem is not to reinforce or destroy any ideas anyone might have about me, how I do what I do, what my intentions are, the way that I do it. My only job as far as I can see is to do the music that I want to do. All those other things are completely out of my control.

A good rapper is a good rapper, a good album is a good album. I don't think anyone is inherently good.

I 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.

There'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.

I think that people have been claiming hip-hop as being dead since the moment it started. I think there are people - and I can be included in that category sometimes - that get frustrated feeling like maybe the industry has handcuffed itself, or trained its artists to do or think about music in a way that classically hasn't led to the greatest records in hip-hop.

I 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.

Everyone 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.

I can't sit in the same place. I gotta keep going.

My favorite era of hip-hop was between '85-'89. That was the era that got me to love hip-hop.

The crews that are going to be self-produced are going to make the great albums, as opposed to making these mix-tapes, these compilations - "Me over this guy" It sounds good individually, but the art of the record is something that is lost. It gets to the point where it's just vocalists and producers coming in and piecing things together.

There are all the offsprings of people who are influenced by punk. It sounds completely different - but it's still rock 'n' roll. When hip-hop came on the scene, it was the last legitimate creation of a new genre.

I'm not trying to change the face of hip-hop music. I'm trying to make my records and always take the next step for me.

I don't think hip-hop is a dying art form. I think it's impossible for hip-hop to be a dying art form.

That dark humor has always been a part of what I've done. It's always been somewhat tongue-in-cheek.

There is a difference these days between who's making the music and buying the music, in terms of the way that they think, grew up, and their perspective. It's become much more diverse.

The emergence of the independent hip-hop scene has replaced what we called the "underground scene". It's what the underground scene has evolved into: actual businesses.

I've never had a huge collection of records; I've never been a beat digga.

I'm a pretty intense person. And I don't know if intense is fun. I put myself through the wringer. That's just how I work.

There's nothing worse than being shackled by some miniscule sort of technology you have onstage, and I think your mettle is going to get tested in those moments.

For me, growing up in hip-hop culture, it's all about having the next style, the new fashion, the new way to express yourself, the fly new beat. I can't sit still; I have no nostalgia. I don't have to have nostalgia.

Hip-hop is always moving. It's always looking for the next style; it's always trying to one-up the last person.

I think branching out is cool, but I think that you have to branch out in a way that makes some sort of organic sense. I would love to put out a rock record eventually, but it would have to somehow philosophically make sense for me.

The worst part is that if you become part of a major - all these independent labels become farm teams for your corporate parent. Basically, you do all the work for years, blowing up an artist - you discover them, blow them up, you build their fan base. And then that artist is like, "Okay, now I'm here. Now I want more. I want to be bigger." And you're either going to be able to accommodate them, you're going to be able to figure out how to take that step with them, or you're going to lose them.

I've always believed that if you cannot do it, then you should not do it.Only when it comes to the point where you've literally dug yourself into a hole, where it's sink or swim, is that viable to me.