I'll Sleep When You're Dead is the second full-length studio album by New York hip hop artist El-P, released on his own Definitive Jux label on March 20, 2007. The album comes almost a full five years after his critically acclaimed debut solo album, Fantastic Damage.
The album's first single, the Trent Reznor-featuring "Flyentology", was released as a digital download via the iTunes Store on February 20, 2007. The song "EMG" appears as the B-side, and an animated video was made by the Adult Swim team. A video was also shot for "Smithereens", featuring images of torture and imprisonment reminiscent of US prison facilities like Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib.
El-P previewed an unmixed version of "Tasmanian Pain Coaster", the album's opening track, on British DJ Gilles Peterson's WorldWide show on January 26, 2006 on Radio 1. A version of "EMG" with the extended title "Everything Must Go" was given away on a covermount CD mixed by DJ Big Wiz, along with the Def Jux-themed July 2005 issue of British hip hop magazine Hip Hop Connection; the same track was also offered as a paid download at Def Jux's online store. Also the songs "Smithereens" and "Poisenville Kids No Wins" featured on the teaser of the third season of The Boondocks.
I'll Sleep When You're Dead debuted at number 78 on the U.S. Billboard 200, selling about 11,000 copies in its first week.
The album's cover—also El-P's logo—is based on a drawing artist Alexander Calder made on a wooden toy airplane for El-P as a child.
Read more about I'll Sleep When You're Dead: Background, Music, Track Listing, Samples, Credits
Famous quotes containing the words sleep and/or dead:
“Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises,
Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight, and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears; and sometime voices,
That, if I then had waked after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
““A lord, it cried, buried in flesh and blood,
And such from whom let no man hope least good,
For I will do none; and as little ill,
For I will dare none.” Good Lord, walk dead still.”
—Ben Jonson (1572–1637)