Rolling Stone (p.74) - 3 stars out of 5 -- "I'LL SLEEP WHEN YOU'RE DEAD sounds like a hip-hop version of a Philip K. Dick novel, all mysterious, dystopian beat poetry. El-P's rhymes are fierce and sometimes cryptic."
Spin (p.94) - 3.5 stars out of 5 -- "[I]t's imbued with El's ever-changing moods and styles. Equal parts faithful-but-twisted boom bap and avant-indie rock."
Entertainment Weekly (p.59) - "[H]e flirts with melody here and relaxes his delivery, allowing us to take a breath before heading back into chaos." -- Grade: B+
Q (p.118) - 3 stars out of 5 -- "[With] a dense production built on pounding beats and malevolent bass....Meline has assembled a quality guestlist..."
Alternative Press (p.160) - 4 stars out of 5 -- "[M]ost notable for its sheer artistry; intricate, lovingly assembled and rightfully buzzing on its own creative juice; it's full of the old-fashioned care and craft hip-hop has largely forgotten."
The Wire (p.47) - "[U]ltimately exhilarating....New York comes up both lyrically and sonically, an appropriate battleground for the album's titular unrest..."
Kerrang (Magazine) (p.50) - "[A] sound that's as fresh and exciting as it is raw and hard-hitting..."
On his highly anticipated release, I'LL SLEEP WHEN YOU'RE DEAD, New York indie rap hero and the man behind Definitive Jux delivers just what rap fans have come to expect--namely, a hodge-podge of space-age, boundary-pushing production wizardry and stream-of-consciousness lyricism laced with paranoid Philip K. Dick-inspired imagery. Most impressive here is how El-P manages to seamlessly fit his futuristic sonic tools into a strictly roots hip-hop format. The end result is a sound more akin to Schooly D and Run DMC than, say, DJ Spooky or Dan the Automator, and as such I'LL SLEEP WHEN YOU'RE DEAD is almost a stylistic throwback--in the same way that STAR WARS was to BUCK ROGERS. El-P proves that he's still the best there is at what he does, though what he does is as hard to pin down as ever. Aesop Rock, Cat Power, the Mars Volta, Cage, and Trent Reznor make up the eclectic guest list.