What it is ladies and gents, children of the world!?
It's Jon Jon Phenomenon, aka Jon Blaze Almighty, aka Jonny with the Shotti. It's that time of the year to celebrate two of Def Jux's hard hitting albums! Now I know I did my little blog about the legendary "Cold Vein" album some days ago. But here's some brief details.. It's entirely produced by EL-P, was released on May 15, 2001 , and it's been on the top 5 Hip-Hop albums of the year. Yea indie labels can do that bihh!! But another face punching album was released the following year with almost the same amount of success, and that's what this is gonna be mostly about! The producer and founder of Def Jux, EL-P released his debut solo album called "Fantastic Damage". Following the success of "The Cold Vein", Def Jux seemed unstoppable as it kept growing. The artists on the roster seemed to be a dream team of all indie Hip-Hop labels. Not that often you hear the founder of a label also dropping tracks, producing everyone's projects and running the label at the same time. It was stressing enough just typing that part. On May 14, 2002. EL-P finally released his own project. True to his sci-fi Hip-Hop sound, El created another universe outside the "Iron Galaxy" he created with CanOx. From first to last it's an epic ride and if you close your eyes, you can imagine yourself on EL-P's version of "Blade Runner". A post 9/11 New York scene thrown a thousand years into the future. With mentions of a paranoid society and holding on to the last bit of sanity you got left. Yeah it goes deep LoL... Songs like "Stepfather Factory" takes logic of today's understanding of abusive Stepfathers and it's thrown into a wicked cartoon. With abusive Stepfather robots literally being fueled by alcohol, or "booze". As crazy as that sounds, some greedy business man is probably thinking that's a good idea. 2017 anything is possible :-/... Songs like "Deep Space 9MM" talks about society's paranoia after the events of 9/11, and my favorite track on the album "Accidents Don't Happen". Camu Tao (R.I.P) starts off describing 2010 being under heavy police state. So the sci-if and reality is all there. Fantastic Damage is really an album that you, the reader should check out. "We're being monitored they know we got thugs in the house." Oh sh*t I hear knocking... take care guys! Gotta go!
-Jon