Killer Mike And El-P, "Butane"

I was lucky enough to have been at Santos Party House on Monday night, where this great thing happened when Killer Mike came onstage at the release party for El-P’s new album Cancer 4 Cure. They were going to perform a song called “Butane” — a duet from Killer Mike’s new album, R.A.P. Music, which El-P produced — but there was a glitch with the music equipment. It turned out that El-P didn’t have the R.A.P. Music instrumental tracks with him. So they did it a capella, and it ended up being even better that way. The whole concert was excellent. (I know I have been going on about these two lately. It really is a very exciting example of mutually beneficial collaboration, what they’ve been doing. They inspire one another, and it’s fresh; they’ve both been making records for more than ten years, but they had never met before last year. And their music has been a bright spot in a pretty shitty month. Here’s Rolling Stone’s cover story about Adam Yauch.)