For nearly 30 years, El-P has fended off easy trends while relentlessly pushing rap into the unknown. And now, at 45, after decades of squelching experimentalism, the rapper-producer is enjoying the greatest popularity of his career with Run the Jewels. The Brooklyn artist’s unlikely cult stardom hasn’t quelled his insurgent tendencies, though. If anything, it feels like the rap world at large has finally come around to his signature sound—a combination of hard-knocking, old-school drums and queasy synths teleported from the year 3000. But he still talks like someone who has embraced his outsider role: “I’m used to my opinion not being everyone else’s opinion,” he says with a laugh.

Born Jaime Meline, El spent most of his life as a pivotal figure in rap’s roiling underground. He was the crux of New York crew Company Flow in the 1990s before making his way as an accomplished solo artist with albums like 2002’s Fantastic Damage and 2012’s Cancer 4 Cure. In the 2000s, he ran the Definitive Jux label, releasing records from like-minded misfits including Cannibal Ox, Mr. Lif, and Aesop Rock. At nearly every turn, he has bolstered underdogs amid the big business of rap.

Throughout 2020, Fat Possum Records is reissuing his solo catalog, a treasure trove of lopsided productions and meticulous raps teeming with visions of the apocalypse that sound as timely as ever. As he looks back, he’s also looking forward to his latest album with Killer Mike. At the end of January, he stepped away from putting the finishing touches on Run the Jewels 4—“This should be the record that we fall off,” he says, “but I’m just feeling like that’s not going to be the case”—to tell me about his formative experiences as a listener. Speaking over the phone from New York, he sets scenes from his past as if he’s reliving them in real time.