Jaime “El-P” Meline and Emmanuel “Million Dollar Mano” Nickerson couldn’t be more different, at least as far as their images go. El-P is a respected elder in the underground rap world, with a well-deserved reputation as a serious dude that he’s earned both with his music and with his outspoken criticism of industry politics. Mano is a cocky young upstart who recently got his first big mainstream exposure by drafting off Kanye West and Jay-Z—he DJed on their recent Watch the Throne tour—and who just formed a collective called Treated Crew, named for a local slang term that means somebody’s lost face. But the two of them actually have a lot in common. Both are idiosyncratic musicians with powerful personalities, and the paranoia and menace that El-P packs tight in his beats have a counterpart in the shadows around the edges of even Mano’s most radio-friendly songs. Both are first among equals in their groups—Mano in Treated Crew and El-P in Company Flow, the New York trio whose 1997 collection Funcrusher Plus still affects the sound of hip-hop today (El-P, Mr. Len, and Bigg Jus reunited last year after more than a decade). And they both love to talk about rap music, so for this week’s Artist on Artist, we had Mano interview El-P by phone. Company Flow plays its first-ever Chicago show Thu 4/12 at Metro; see Soundboard for more. —Miles Raymer
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What you got in the pipeline right now, good sir? Man, I’ve got a lot right now. I got my record [Cancer for Cure] dropping on the 22nd of May, and the week before that, the Killer Mike record [R.A.P. Music], which I produced, is dropping. It’s kind of a crazy time—I kind of went from being very relaxed to being insanely busy. I’m a little scared, to be honest.
Yes, and that was when I was a senior in high school. How old were you then? Um, shit. I don’t know, let me think. I’m 37.
I think the energy comes back, so yeah, there are things I see happening now that remind me of some of the energy and some of the vibes that happened back then, you know? I couldn’t help but feel like, watching Odd Future come out and blow up—I really liked watching that. It was like, yeah, I know that feeling—that was that energy. The reason people love those motherfuckers and the reason they should be loved is because they came out again with that fuck-you energy. Just as a fan, that shit is very necessary.
The question I wanted to ask you is, for that song, is it all replayed, or is it a sample? Oh no, it’s all played out, man. Yeah.
