In 1997 with the words “Rugged like Rwanda,” Company Flow easily staked out a spot within hip hop’s history that can’t, won’t and shouldn’t be ignored. Of course, the following issues that group members developed in relation to the Rawkus imprint, the label releasing its music, was another sign that some of the industry’s most talented acts will always run into trouble. Even if its for no good reason.

Even during the nineties, though, one of the trio’s emcees and producer El-P seemed like a guy who was pissed off at something. His experience releasing music through established labels probably contributing to that. Because of that as well the prodigious out put he was then engaged with, El-P founded Def Jux a few years on to alleviate some of his business problems.

It worked for a time as the early aughties saw Def Jux releasing some of the most densely and well produced music of the decade – see Oxtrumentals for proper proof. With the decline of the record industry as well as the American economy in a broad sense, though, Def Jux and a number of other independent outlets faced tough times. And earlier this year, the imprint stopped functioning, although, it’s honcho hasn’t announced its death, just a period of adjustment.

Either way, Def Jux isn’t issuing music, but El-P is. And we should all be thankful for that.

Though it’s been three years since the release of I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead, El-P hasn’t returned with an album full of lyrics (that’s next, apparently). Instead, he’s endeavored to issue the third installment of his Weareallgoingtoburninhell mix series. And this time, it’s being properly issued through Gold Dust.

Regardless of what label is releasing his work, El-P has retained a stunning persistence of vision with this newest disc amping up the electro-eighties’ quotient that has always been an underlying current to his work.

With the anger often associated with his lyrical work, some might find it surprising that the same emotions are portrayed in El-P’s instrumental music. But they are. Tracks like “DMSC” seem ready for a dance floor even as “Secret Police Man's Ball” and tracks of that ilk should elicit the walls closing in just like riding a crowded train in NYC should summon roughly the same feelings.

There’s really not a bummer track included here. And for what amounts to a place holder in his discography, that’s a shock. After almost twenty years in the game, though, that’s what listeners should expect from El-P, though.