EI-P is one half of the duo Run The Jewels and has had a multitude of hits as part of the collective alongside the Atlanta emcee Killer Mike. For over two decades, the producer has delivered experimental, hard-hitting beats and has pushed hip-hop forward in so many subtle yet significant ways.
The Brooklyn beatmaker (real name Jaime Meline) has been producing and rapping since the early-2000s. With a strong core fanbase, he has released over four solo albums on his record label Definitive Jux including, Fantastic Damage, High Water, I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead, and Cancer 4 Cure. He formed the collective Run The Jewels in 2013 and garnered a lot of attention alongside Killer Mike.
As the primary producer of Run The Jewels, Meline released four albums to critical acclaim, Run the Jewels, Run the Jewels 2, Run the Jewels 3, and RTJ4, which was released in 2020. EI-P has been musically active since the early 1990s and was part of the Brooklyn trio Company Flow. Signed to Rawkus Records in 1995, EI-P became a renowned producer on the New York underground.
With such an interesting career path, in 2020, Meline sat down with Pitchfork to speak about his childhood and musical influences. Reflecting on the first song he ever heard, the producer revealed, “My parents loved music, and I got into a lot of stuff as a 5-year-old just because it was playing in my house—the turntable was the centre of the living room at the time, and there wasn’t any cable TV. With ‘Another One Bites the Dust,’ I remember very specifically just being like, ‘What the fuck is this shit? Why are my shoulders moving? This is all happening, and I have no context for this as a human.’ It was a brand new feeling.”
However, as well as expressing his love for EPMD, there was one rap album El-P called “a fucking moment.” Referencing The Infamous by Queens duo Mobb Deep, Meline divulged, “When I was 15, I shared a manager with Mobb Deep. I don’t think they stuck with him, and I definitely didn’t, but I met those dudes a couple of times. I had their original demo under the name Poetical Prophets, which got them in the Unsigned Hype column at The Source. And I had actually submitted beats to the label for the first record they did, Juvenile Hell. Back then, they were on some smooth, slick shit, but I was hearing from the inside about the evolution of where they were going. Still, I had no idea that they were going to do what they did.”
He continued, “When they dropped this record, it was just the hardest, most fucking street, most sinister, most real-sounding shit. It took everyone by legitimate surprise. It was such a fucking moment. I remember listening to Stretch & Bobbito and hearing them play the album version of ‘Shook Ones, Pt. II.’ It’s a legendary, legendary piece of music. I was blown away by it. They changed everything. They made an East Coast gangster record that wasn’t derivative of anything else.”
You can listen to The Infamous below.