El Pus rocks the rap boat

Hip-hop is the young adult of the music world, tentatively exploring the stylistic boundaries established during its formative years. But somewhere beyond the bling-bling polish of mainstream hip-hop and the all-too-often formulaic sensibilities of the underground, the spirit of hip-hop seeks liberation from stylistic constraint. The soul meets punk-rock ethos of Atlanta's own El Pus (rhymes with loose) represents a coming of age in established hip-hop mentalities. In the world of El Pus, hip-hop is an influence to be incorporated, rather than a style in which to be enclosed. And while the rap-meets-rock thing is far from revolutionary, El Pus takes it one step beyond the gimmickry or exploitation of previous acts by pumping it with soul, a rare commodity in our 'nookified' world.

"We came from a hip-hop background, but we started doing other things because, basically, hip-hop bored us," explains vocalist and songwriter Cufi. "It was just a career move for us. We're artists. A lot of hip-hop cats are artists, but they limit themselves. They're like, 'I'm gonna rap, and that's all I'm gonna do.' That's just not the route we chose."

The choice was not exactly all their own. The story of El Pus' expansion from a hip-hop group to an instrumental act involves a stranger and a serendipitous crime. "Me and [fellow vocalist/founder] Cosmo used to be a rap group," says Cufi. "It was just me and him and another cat. We had all the drum machines and the samplers and all that. And we were at the beginning stages of playing around with the sampler and playing riffs into the sampler. Then somebody stole the sampler. So me and him had to start playing. That's really how it started out."

The switch allowed Cufi and Cosmo to blossom. The longtime instrumentalists rediscovered the ability to write songs and expanded beyond the simple rhymes and beats of their hip-hop leanings. The two have mixed feelings about what would happen if they met the thief who helped shape their musical approach.

"I'd thank him, then I'd beat his ass," says Cosmo. "I'd be like, 'Man, we owe our success to you, now prepare for the beat down.'"

The continuing evolution of El Pus involved a gradual shift, from two songwriters straddling the drum machine/instrumentation fence to the creation of a full five-piece band. Along the way, El Pus hooked up with Speech, whose own organic hip-hop sound found success in the early '90s with Arrested Development. Speech signed El Pus to his production company, Vagabond.

"When we did the first record, Strange Cowboy, it was still pretty much just Cosmo and I working with beats and drum machines, and then we added the band right after it came out because we had to do shows to support the record," says Cufi. "Now, the second record is more of a live thing. There's like two sequenced songs on the whole thing. So, adding the live band has influenced the way everything gets written and done."

Indeed, an early look at the as-yet-unnamed new recording reveals a much more stylistically diverse effort than the sequence-heavy Strange Cowboy. Slower, often acoustic-based grooves found in tunes such as "Yo' Thing" and "Invisible" find a way to be tender without being soft. Meanwhile, "Arrogant" and "Urban Robotica" capture a playful punk aesthetic, heavy but frisky as a doped-up hippo. In all, the expansive dynamic of the band's live-instrument incarnation proves much more versatile, allowing lyricism and emotion to develop.

The addition of bassist Woodchuck, guitarist Tony, and drummer Enrique brought life to the creature known as El Pus (while unrelated, Cufi and Tony have assumed a Ramone-style family surname, Delpus; the rest of the crew nonchalantly dismisses the last name question altogether). The switch to live instrumentation also raised a few eyebrows among those familiar with the band's hip-hop roots. As Cufi explains, "Black artists who do hip-hop, we have this mentality where you can't play instruments — 'Oh no, that's the next step, that's for white people.' A lot of people see El Pus and they're like, 'Ooooh! Y'all cats used to be rappers, now y'all play!' But we started playing right when we started rapping. There's no difference between becoming an excellent freestyler and an excellent songwriter or player. It's the same method."

While El Pus has a strong foundation in hip-hop, they recognize the folly in intentionally limiting their scope in order to stay true to some romantic hip-hop paragon. "That's where hip-hop can get real limited, because it just stops, right there," explains Cosmo. "Right when they could start getting into other kinds of music, hip-hop artists just stop with this style that they are comfortable with. I can sit down and write a rhyme all day. That's nothing, especially if you grew up in it."

This notion of being locked into one style gets a grave rise out of the usually good-humored El Pus clan. While El Pus itself has been tied into the underground hip-hop scene, the band members question any sort of musical alignment to some movement or voice.

"I think that a lot of people in the underground write things that they think other people in the underground are gonna like," says Woodchuck. Adds Cufi, "And it comes out being this contrived shit like, 'Yo, I'm underground like that, I'm a real cat in the streets.' I'm like, just write the song. Write what you feel like. If you feel like it's a sunny, beautiful day, write that, too. A lot of people consider us underground hip-hop. We don't feel a part of that at all. That's why we talk about it like this, cause it's really something that we're sitting back and looking at. Some of these cats be trying so hard to be underground, like, 'It's my mission to be underground.' A lot of the time, these cats don't sound like they're having fun at all. Go in there and have a ball. That's what we try to do. It's fun to try new things."

Some of the new things El Pus is trying out include summer appearances in New York and Florida as part of the 2000 Warped Tour. The band has also completed a second full-length album following a tight-lipped and, by insider accounts, not amicable split with Speech's Vagabond Produckshuns (when pressed on the issue, the band declines to comment for legal reasons). In between Warped Tour appearances, El Pus also recently performed a series of showcases in New York and Atlanta for major labels, including Sire. While you can expect to hear more from El Pus, don't expect to hear more of the same. All their politicking about stylistic diversity actually does translate into some very deep efforts.

"We don't do it in reverse," explains Cufi. "We don't write songs for a specific audience. That's why no two songs on our album sound alike."