Happy 10th Anniversary to El-P’s third studio album Cancer 4 Cure, originally released May 22, 2012.
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Cancer 4 Cure is an album born out of pain and loss. When Jaime “El-P” Meline recorded it, he was, in his own words, at the lowest point of his life. One of his closest friends had succumbed to cancer. His Def Jux record label had folded. He was struggling with substance abuse issues. At the time, El-P had been a force in the record industry for over 15 years, and he felt he had very little to show for it.
Released 10 years ago, his third studio album was inspired by a series of unfortunate and downright tragic events. His efforts to keep Def Jux afloat during the late ’00s and early ’10s had nearly emptied his bank account. When the trailblazing label finally folded, he had little left, both financially and creatively. He was able to scrape by through selling beats to Jay DeMarco of the Cartoon Network for their Adult Swim programming.
Meanwhile, Tero “Camu Tao” Smith, El-P’s brother-in-arms and collaborator, had passed in 2008 due to lung cancer. El-P had spoken with Matthew Johnson of Fat Possum Records, primarily a blues label, and made a deal to distribute Tao’s posthumous solo album, King of Hearts (2010), as Def Jux’s final release. This ended up being one of the keys to El-P’s own “redemption.” Johnson later asked El-P what he was working on and ended up making another deal to distribute another album. El-P took all of his agony and frustration and channeled it into the project, which became Cancer 4 Cure.
As El-P told fellow rapper Open Mike Eagle during an episode of the latter’s podcast, What Had Happened Was…, Cancer 4 Cure is a project built around the principle that pain is a largely internal process, and that people both represent the cause of and hold the solution to their own misery. El-P believed much of his own grim situation was self-made, but also felt he possessed the key to escape this prison. The album pulses with psychological anguish, and it stands shoulder to shoulder with any entries in El-P’s discography.
Though he’s usually credited for handling most of the production on his solo albums by himself, El-P teams with Little Shalimar on a handful of tracks on Cancer 4 Cure. Much like I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead (2007), many of the beats involve live instrumentation rather than sampled material. The overall vibe is incredibly frenzied, reflecting El-P’s life at the time of the recording process. Lyrically, El-P attempts to say more with less, often limiting things to two verses, or occasionally one verse, per track.
Cancer 4 Cure begins with “Request Denied,” which is pure pandemonium. About two-thirds of the track length is made up of the introductory instrumental, a sonic whirlwind of chaos and turmoil. With his sole verse, El-P again touches a popular theme throughout his career: how his upbringing in New York City shaped his life. In particular, learning his love of music from his father, and then moving from Manhattan to Brooklyn with his mother and siblings.
El-P has said the song’s energy is meant to match the youthful energy that one possesses during their teenage years, living life with reckless abandon. He manages to keep pace with the beats’ blistering pace, rapping “I'm a ‘holy fuck, what did he just utter?’ marksman / Orphan, a whore-born, war-torn life for the harvest / A fair-trade target of air raid, starter kit / Used heart plucked from the bargain bin.”
EL-P does address the issues that he faced during the post-ISWYD period of his life. He speaks to his use of drugs to escape reality on “Works Every Time.” Backed by Interpol’s Paul Banks, he directly addresses the illicit substances like they’re a living organism. “Don't make me suffer this dimension straight,” he pleads. “When we can bend face. Let space pixelate / $60 for a new born you / Pay no attention to these savages: they don't own truth.”
Two of Cancer 4 Cure’s singles seem to capture that inherent bedlam that was part of El-P’s life at the time. “The Full Retard” feels like a fusillade of unbridled debauchery, lyrics filtered through El-P’s drug-addled soul as he wreaks havoc throughout NYC. Meanwhile, “Stay Down” represents, in El’s words, his descent into madness. Musically, it’s a smoky concoction, filled with distorted keys and what sounds like a live trombone.
The album’s lead single “Drones Over Bklyn” also reflects paranoia on a grander scale. El-P has said the song was inspired by a fever dream where an army of drones hovered around his Brooklyn home. El-P focuses his lyrics on how our population is under observation at all times, either through the government keeping us under constant surveillance or corporations looking to harvest our data and sell our profiles as commodities. The track climaxes with a nearly two-minute instrumental outro, composed of blaring synths, wailing organs, and drum track seemingly influenced by Schooly D’s “PSK… What Does It Mean?”
El-P utilizes his storytelling skills on “For My Neighbor Upstairs (Mums the Word),” which thematically draws from the same places as tracks like Company Flow’s “Last Good Sleep” and his own “Stepfather Factory.” He tells the brief story in reverse order, with the first verses finding him defiantly refusing to answer questions from the NYPD about a murder in his building. With the second verse, he rewinds things, providing context for the killing, and his own tacit encouragement of a woman to “do the thing you have to” to her abuser. El-P has said that the song was inspired by real events, as he and his then girlfriend would overhear a constant barrage of verbal abuse from a faceless man to his equally anonymous wife in the apartment above them.
El-P has an uncanny talent for making sex and relationships sound like dystopian endeavors, and he continues to explore psyches of individuals damaged by each. He aggressively pushes back on a potential romantic attachment of “Jig Is Up,” unable to accept that there’s anyone who would love him. He treats the person like he’s interrogating an enemy combatant, demanding, “Tell me your real name, who's your leader? / What agenda got you slumming it down here? Who's handing out the dough?”
He continues to utilize the interrogation dynamic on “Sign Here,” delving into the dynamics of power and physical intimacy. El-P is one of the few emcees that I can think of who’s explored ideas of domination and submission in their rhymes, and most rappers don’t speak openly about kink. The track itself lends a severe air to proceedings, ending with a hellacious and winding keyboard solo.
It’s really hard to talk about Cancer 4 Cure without mentioning Killer Mike. The aforementioned DeMarco had introduced the two of them to each other, which ended up with El-P producing the entirety of Mike’s R.A.P. Music (2012). El-P took a break from recording Cancer 4 Cure to work with Mike, and you can hear Mike’s influence on some of El-P’s album.
The imposing Atlanta-raised emcee contributes a pair of verses to “Tougher Colder Killer,” which also features Despot, an acclaimed emcee with affiliations to Def Jux during the mid to late ’00s. All three deftly explore the mentality of killing and inflicting violence on others, be it on the battlefield or the street corner. El-P enlists Mr. Mutherfuckin’ eXquire and Danny Brown for the blistering “Oh Hail No,” as all three take the perspective as underdogs refusing to bow to the pressure to fold.
When El-P spoke on What Had Happened Was… about Cancer 4 Cure, he said that there was always one song on the album that defined the album and the recording process. In this case, it was “$4 Vic,” the final track and the first song that he wrote for the project. The song captures El-P’s state of mind as well as anything on Cancer 4 Cure. In this case, he’s both the “$4 Victim” and the robber who jacks him for his meager ends: he’s gone through “a lot of trouble for very little win.” El-P had built what he thought was a successful career and record label, only to lose it all, along with one of his closest friends.
At the same time, El-P doesn’t wallow in misery during the song. Rather, he resolves to turn his life around, moving on from the misery that’s engulfed his existence. Again, he decides to addresses his psychological demons, rapping, “I thought I'd drop on by and wish you all the luck desired / I wish you all the souls your little mouth can tuck inside / You’ll always be that special part of me that loves to dine / On grinning void, so flirty touches dizzy lust I must imbibe.”
Things took a desired upturn for El-P after the release of Cancer 4 Cure. Well, truthfully it was the release of this project as well as Killer Mike’s R.A.P. Music. Through no plan of his own, the albums were released in successive weeks: first Mike’s, then El’s. This led to the two touring together to support the project, which eventually turned to the pair forming Run the Jewels. And we all know how that’s turned out.
It’s a shame that El-P believed that he got only “a little bit of win” out of the first 15 years of his storied music career. But Cancer 4 Cure became a cathartic experience, where he exorcised the pain that his past brought him, allowing him to re-start with a clean slate. He’s spent the last 10 years of his career on a constant upward swing, making music that has spoken to life in the 2010s and early 2020s as much as any artist out there. Cancer 4 Cure helped give him that strength and has allowed him to move forward to win more than he’d ever expected.
Enjoyed this article? Read more about El-P here:
Fantastic Damage (2002) | I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead (2007) | RTJ4 (2020)
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