El-P on Camu Tao's legacy
» Going deep on the posthumous releases of an artist on the verge of greatness.
Initially, El-P and I struggled to determine whether we would discuss Central Services, his one-time collaboration with the departed rapper Camu Tao, as well as Camu's unfinished solo record, King Of Hearts.
I had a lot of apprehension going into an interview with a close friend of the rapper, who died of lung cancer in 2008. Camu's record is a difficult listen. Vocally Camu sounds unrestrained and brilliant, but the record lacks completion, as he never got the chance to flesh out his songs. What's left is the skeletal demos, almost minimalist. But El-P was prepared to discuss his friend's work with the knowledge that the release forces us to hear the finality of death.
So this morning I want to talk about the Camu record, King of Hearts and the Central Services record you two did together. I'm wondering: how much of the work done here is posthumous, and how much was conceived before Camu died?
We all expected to get Camu in the studio and go as far as he wanted to go with the record. The songs are bare, but then again a lot of them are just what he wanted. A lot of them wouldn’t have changed much. Knowing Camu, he had a lot of talented musician friends he would have liked to have collaborated and have involved. I do think the album would have been different had he lived to complete it.
It’s hard to really tell. The reality is he didn’t have the time to ruminate over it. The songs he made are the songs he made and most of them were made while he was sick.
How long into the recording process did he know? Did he work on the whole record knowing?
I think Camu knew that he was sick longer than he had been diagnosed. Something was wrong with him and he knew it. He kind of hid it, not only from everyone around him, but he didn’t admit it. He went through some serious physical pain for a good year. He dropped a lot of weight and no one really questioned it because he never really let on.
Every once in a while, in retrospect, I remember him eating something or trying to eat and just clutching his stomach in pain. He would never draw attention to it. In his head he was petrified. He knew that something was wrong with him. A lot of the songs that were written reflected that when you listen to the music and the lyrics.
When he finally got diagnosed the doctor gave him two weeks to live. He lived for a year and a half after that.
As you were going through these demos, planning out the King Of Hearts posthumous release was there any temptation to mess with the sound or did you want to leave it completely as is?
It was a tough line to straddle. It was difficult to figure out, philosophically how to approach it. Camu had an album file on iTunes that he’d shared with us all that was basically a representation of his record. All the demos he’d done, in the order he wanted them. The majority of them were incomplete, in the sense that they weren’t 100% done, but most of them had full verses and full beats and hooks.
This was the reference that I used. It wasn’t me deciding what had to be on his record, but him deciding. We had to go find the files and the best way to put them together. For the most part, I stuck to what his sound was. When we found the files and would mix them, we would keep his levels; if it was distorted we would keep as much intact to get the best mix on that sound. A lot of them weren’t even mixed because there were no files, just straight up mp3s.
Others I had to go into Garageband to find the original file he did the beat on or the Logic file he’d recorded the vocals on. It was sort of a puzzle that I had to put together. Luckily, I had these demos as references. It was about getting the closest possible representation of the album he had in mind. There were decisions that had to be made on cutting the length of some stuff because it was just one little hook and a beat, but those things became small little interludes. I’d tried to be faithful.
That sounds like a very grueling process.
Well, it’s the least I could do.
Hmm, yeah, when it’s for a friend it’s probably not as difficult.
The process wasn’t as grueling as much as the emotional aspect of it. I think it was emotionally difficult because it took me a second to gear up and face it. I’ve got to get in there and really expose myself to my friend when I’m still emotionally raw about everything. I think that emotion made me determined. That love for him gave me purpose to complete this. It wasn’t a chore, it was what it was.
Is there a reason you included the raw demo of “Kill Me” as the last song. I feel as though “Fuck Me” on [Central Services’] Forever Frozen In Television Time is the fully-realized version and I’m curious about the juxtaposition of the two. It seems as though he’s still milling the song in his head on the demo.
Well, there’s two ways to look at this record. One is that it’s an album and the other is that it’s a collection, an anthology of Camu’s music. That he’s not around anymore and there will be nowhere else to get his stuff. I listened to this demo and it was the original… you know he wrote that song “Fuck Me” for Central Services and I’d never heard the original he had done.
In the “Fuck Me” one I had influence on it. I remember changing it. He had originally made it “kill me” and I remember being like, “no, no let’s call it ‘fuck me’.” And I remember another lyric he was saying “kill me” again and I said, “Why don’t you make it, ‘but don’t kill me.’” We’re collaborating on this and I never knew he had another version of this song. When I heard this a cappella of him, sitting there really sort of quietly and beautifully singing this other version, I heard what he wanted out of it. I thought it was beautiful. It just moved me. It felt right to include it because in some way it gave an example of what was going in his creative process. The album was about him coming into his own and writing these songs that are very different and chilling in some ways.
I thought, if I don’t put this out no one’s going to know he’s going to exist.
I feel as though there’s an amazing connection there in which he’s trying to express something you hadn’t seen in him yet.
It was. It kind of made me feel like, “Wow, this is what he really wanted to say.” That’s the reason we didn’t put “Fuck Me”, the Central Services version, on the record. I wanted this record to be all Camu. It wouldn’t have made sense for me to have my fingerprints on it. Once I recognized there was a version of this song that was really Camu’s and if I hadn’t have been there to give my suggestions and alter it in the way I saw fit (which we both agreed on at the time), it would have been different.
I don’t really know. It’s a really pure… there’s no music, but you can hear him creating music as he’s singing it. He obviously has an idea in his head and it’s very indicative of what the album is. This is him wanting so much more, he wanted to go there.
Hopefully people look at something like that as what it is. The way I look at it. It’s a moment that’s been captured, that could have been lost into the ether were it not placed here.
Why was the Central Services record shelved for so long? Was the timing just never right?
It wasn’t really shelved. It was just me and him hadn’t gotten the chance to keep going with it. Camu had moved back to Ohio and started making these other songs, so we signed him to do the King Of Hearts record. He started focusing on that, so the plan was we’ll wait until he’s done with King Of Hearts and release this in conjunction with King Of Hearts. And then he got sick. That was just the way it went. It got delayed and delayed and we couldn’t do anything until we knew what was going on.
After a couple of years it was like, why even bother putting it out because Camu’s shit is going to be so crazy. It just wasn’t a big deal to us. We didn’t do the Central Services music thinking… we didn’t know what we were going to do with it. We were just doing it for fun.
Do you think there would have been sampling issues had you put full energy behind promoting that record?
Probably.
[Laughs] I’m glad it remains the way it is. It sounds incredible. I’m a fan that’s been anticipating it for awhile.
I’m wondering how long KiD CuDi has known about these demos. The direction his music is taking, is there any cause for alarm in style biting?
I don’t think he’s known about it very long. I don’t think that’s valid. He and Cage became friends over the past year. That’s how KiD CuDi heard them. If anything KiD CuDi appreciates him. Plus, they are both from Ohio. Cage said KiD CuDi was super into the record and really into Camu and felt really connected to the music. You can kind of see why.
We asked if he would give us a quote for the record and he was nice enough to do it. I think that was pretty fucking cool of him.
I feel like the release party in Columbus will be something that’s good for Ohio considering the tough luck they’ve had in the past few years losing Camu and DJ PRZM.
Ohio has had a lot of tough luck and lost some great people. I know how much Ohio meant to Camu. I’m really close to his fiancé and she really put the party together. I wanted to go and celebrate with Camu’s family and all the people from his hometown he really cared about so much. It’s just going to be a celebration of Camu. I think it’s going to be great. It’s a chance to heal a little bit. I don’t like leaving a question mark at the end of this whole thing. This record and coming together with the community he was involved in, is a chance to show and prove.
I appreciate you taking the time to talk about a great artist.
Thank you for giving a shit, man.
Posted on August 18, 2010. More on: camu tao, elp interview, king of hearts, central services, allyson baker
