When Rawkus Records and Quannum Projects were sucked into Universal's corporate black hole last year, the breadth of so-called underground hip-hop shrank considerably. Whatever such a grab means for music in general, it inadvertently boosted the street cred of the scene's most aggressively indie label, Definitive Jux, formed a few years ago by El Producto, a founding member of one of Brooklyn's most innovative crews, Company Flow.
Handpicked by ex-Rage Against the Machine vocalist Zach De La Rocha to produce his overdue solo album, El-P provides an antidote to corporate rap that's more sonic than verbal. Often described as "dirty" by music writers, his old-school mix of scratching and drum machines is muddied with new-school electronica; in particular, the "glitch" style that takes advantage of distortion and software malfunctions. El-P's dark soundscapes made Cannibal Ox's "The Cold Vein" one of the most talked-about albums of 2001, and the dense textures and fast-flowing beats of his 2002 solo effort, "Fantastic Damage," are now being studied by every basement DJ east of the Rockies.
On the upcoming Def Jux tour El-P will share MC duties with the label's premier rapper of the moment, Mr. Lif, whose companion LP-EP, "I Phantom" and "Emergency Rations," ended up on many critics' 10-best lists. Lif's blue-collar credibility doesn't advance the usual indie political agenda -- at least, not overtly -- it simply reinforces his sharply observed narratives about holding down a job and raising a family.