A biography for El-Phasn’t been written yet.
“I work on a musician's week, so Monday is Friday. By the time Thursday rolls around, you stay in, and you work, and you don't go out because it's horrible.”
“If there's any credence to the guy who wrote 'Drones Over Blkyn' a year before drones were flying over Brooklyn, then listen to me: we're going to be in fascist police state.”
“I always liked the idea that you can put something in you onto a canvas or a piece of paper and have it exist there and not inside you. It's a way to control things.”
“Anything that gets to the more emotional and dark side of music, I always enjoy.”
“I'm not that prolific in terms of making my own music.”
“Labels are curators of taste, and the best ones know how to monetize what an artist is trying to do.”
“I really don't believe in going too far out of your way to hunt down somebody to do a song.”
“I really only put stuff out when I have something to say and I feel like I've got a direction and I've got an idea - and that can even take two, two-and-a-half years to flesh out.”
“You don't have to say something directly to affect someone. You can make a piece of music without words that can capture a feeling of tragedy or struggle or anger or triumph. It's the translation of the human experience into another form.”
“'Meow The Jewels' was a nightmare of a promise I had to fulfill. We made a joke that if the fans gave us $40,000, we would remix our album using nothing but cat sounds.”
“You put a piece of music out, and it's not in your hands anymore, and that's cool with me.”
“I reserve the right to think many different things and to change my mind and to even be wrong.”
“I'm not a 'dystopian, futuristic master': I'm a schnook walking the street. It's an insane reality we're living in, and I'm just trying to translate it for myself.”
“I had a year, where... I was secretly, 100 percent, dead broke.”
“I probably started trying to make beats at around 12.”
“Run The Jewels, me and Mike, and our connection and everything, came out of a period of time where I had personally lost everything.”
“Rap music deserves truth, and it deserves spontaneity.”
“I think it's impossible for hip-hop to be a dying art form.”
“I guess there are a lot of writers out there who get really inspired when they're depressed. I can't write about being depressed until I'm happy. That's all there is to it. I need space.”
“I remember listening to 'Low End Theory': I had been kicked out of high school. I was in GED school in the LES, and all I could do was listen to 'Low End Theory.' I was in a strange time in my life, and 'Low End Theory' kind of defined that time.”