It's Time You Learned About Ill Bill and El-P's Brooklyn

Ill Bill and El-P have been friends for nearly twenty years. When you get them on the phone together, there's really not much you have to do other than sit back and let them talk. Noisey recently got a chance to listen in as the two underground hip-hop legends discussed the Brooklyn of their youths, how their surroundings inspired them to rhyme, and how some things never actually change.

ILL BILL: I lived in Brooklyn my whole life. I moved to North Carolina like two months ago. I’m in the Outer Banks now, the Kill Devil Hills area.

El-P: I moved there when I was six. I’ve been there the majority of my life. I think it’s changed like everything changes. I don’t think you’ll find anyone ever who will look at a neighborhood and be like, “You know, this is exactly what it was like 20 years ago.” I experienced change. I grew up in an era that was completely different. I was in the Koch administration. It had a different cultural landscape. Even just taking the train and its covered in graffiti to the gangs when we were teenagers. It was a different time. I guess it’s probably completely different at this point.

B: The gangs were running rampant when we were younger, but that’s pretty much all gone now. It’s definitely cleaned up. I miss seeing those trains destroyed; I don’t care what anyone says. Those drippy graffiti tags on the inside of the trains, those end-to-end burners on the outside ; so much character and personality to the city. I’m not going to say I miss drugs and crime because the drugs and crime are still there, but now it’s like everywhere else, they’re hiding it so the tourists won’t get scared. They made it cleaner and safer, like Vegas. It was more honest back then and as New Yorkers we took pride in that griminess. We didn’t even really think about it that much, but not that it’s gone, we’re proud when it was dirty, you know what I mean?

Stream Ill Bill's The Grimy Awards below:

E: You bring up a good point though because underneath the surface, it really hasn’t changed. It’s interesting because the gentrification is so intense that you get a lot of people walking around in neighborhoods with no idea of what the dynamic is and not really understanding that it’s still Brooklyn. It’s interesting to me. I’m sometimes baffled by how little connection to the reality of the situation is. A lot of people are buying into the surface cleanliness , the pseudo-friendliness of it. There’s a lot of that, but it’s not all sweet. I feel that we’re slipping a little bit and that it’s coming to the surface a little bit more just because of economy.

B: I think at the same time our generation is guilty of what every generation is guilty of and that’s calling the new generation corny. There’s going to be a little bit of that old-man bitterness like, “When I was around, that shit was realer,” but that would be true in our case.

E: I just think growing up in New York from the perspective of being an artist, the cultural diversity of New York is the same now as it was then. You can relate it in a lot of ways, but just growing up from music to overall style everything was really new and cutting edge. New York was always at the forefront of that. I don’t know if it is as much as it used to be because of the Internet, but I think New York still has something a little bit different.

B: I have to fight it, but that perspective of, “It was better then”… I don’t really think in those terms. But what I will say is that I know how much I was inspired growing up as a kid in New York. I know that growing up in New York had a direct influence on what I did with my life. Seeing the trains, seeing people walk around with boomboxes blasting rap music, the culture of it; it inspired me to get involved and become the person that I became. Artistically, it was such a big thing for me. Everyone gets inspired by what’s around them. If you’re growing up here now, I wonder what the result is. I just don’t know.

E: All of those things that I could identify really easily just in my face and thinking, “Who the fuck is drawing this shit on the train?!” I tried to figure it out and figure out what it meant and realize that this is connected to this music that’s on my block. It was a direction. A lot of those particular things that influenced me are not there anymore.

B: I feel the same way, I think part of why we were so attracted to hip hop coming out of New York is the way hip hop records are put together with the different unrelated samples—the patchwork aspect of it is kind of similar to how we grew up. Different backgrounds, different people learning from each other, exchanging ideas and influences, you know what I mean? Making a whole new thing out of those things. That’s hip-hop. Outside of the music, New York is the Mecca of hip-hop. We were a hip-hop city. It sounds corny in that aspect, but if you break it down that’s why it came out of here.

E: It came out of those things specifically. Not that it matters—everything has to start somewhere. I love that fact that it got beyond these walls, but it’s true though. It’s weird. I love this city, but I don’t romanticize at this point. This is where I grew up, so I knew it influenced me in a lot of ways. I don’t think that stops no matter what happens. The face of the city changes constantly, even that aspect of that is loosely inspiring.

B: It’s in the music as well. I live in North Carolina and people that I meet around my ways just trip off of my way of speaking, dressing. I look like an alien out there. Most people are wearing cowboy hats down there. They are looking at me all weird. That’s what New York did. It’s going to be a part of us, wherever we go, what we do creatively, or even interacting with someone on a daily basis at the corner store.

E: I used to think that growing up in New York made me ready for everything for everything. Before I really got a chance to travel, I thought that I was better prepared for the world because I was from New York. I had more street smarts or whatever. Once I started traveling the country, I was like, “Oh shit, that’s just not true.” The only thing that I know how to do is survive in New York. Every where it’s completely different and in fact because I grew up in this amazing city that had access to so much shit, be it culturally, artistically, civilly, even just a transportation system….

B: Do you drive a car on a regular basis?

E: Nah.

B: Neither do I and I live in an area where you kind of need to drive. I still don’t.

E: It’s because you’re crippled because you’re a New Yorker.

B: [Laughs]

E: If you live in a crowded area of Brooklyn or Manhattan, having a car is a hindrance. It doesn’t even make sense. I basically grew up all my life without a car. Now if I go anywhere else, I’m like, “Where can I catch a cab?” There’s no cabs.

B: They don’t do cabs anywhere else. It’s a rarity.

E: It’s definitely interesting. A lot of the attitude I used to have about being from New York when I was younger just disappeared when I started to the rest of the world. This is just a really unique place. Obviously, there’s some amazing things you can learn here, but they’re not really applicable to the rest of the world.

Ill Bill's new album The Grimy Awards is in stores now, and it's really good. Stream it on Spotify here and buy it on iTunes here.

El-P's most recent albums are R.A.P. Music with Killer Mike and his solo offering Cancer 4 Cure. Stream them here and here, and buy them here and here.

Drew Millard literally pushed "Record" on a recorder for this but he feels very grateful for having been able to do this. He, too, is on Twitter - @drewmillard