El-P FINALLY has a film to score.
The dystopian beat-making, jewels running, action film proselytizing rapper has been pretty obviously jonesing to add film scoring to his lengthy list of extracurriculars for a while now. He previously made some music for a Blade Runner 2049 trailer and appeared on the Baby Driver soundtrack as part of Run the Jewels, along with Big Boi on the Danger Mouse production “Chase Me.” Run the Jewels’ “Legend Has It” was also used in one of the trailers for Black Panther, but the Run the Jewels 3 cut wasn’t written for that purpose.
Fonzo (which, for better or worse, is NOT a gritty, noirishly dark Happy Days spinoff film centering on a controversial interpretation of Arthur Fonzarelli) is a biopic of Al “Fonzo” Capone, notorious Prohibition-era gangster, the cast of which includes Tom Hardy as Al Capone, Linda Cardellini, Jack Lowden, Matt Dillon, and Kyle MacLachlan (Coop!). The film focuses on Capone’s development of syphilitic dementia during his prison sentence, using the gangster’s psychiatric ailment as the motor of a frame narrative in which Capone will hallucinate memories of his days as a ruthless Chicago bootlegger and crime boss. Cool! (And sorta fucked up!)
It’s being directed by Josh Trank, whose last film was 2015’s Fantastic Four, which I forgot existed till just this second. “Since I was fourteen years old, El-P’s music has been one of the most important creative influences in my life,” Trank said. “There’s literally no greater honor for me than to collaborate with him today and bear witness to this next stage of his artistic journey.”
There you have it, folks: Literally no greater honor. Shepherding underground hip-hop legend El-P into the world of film scoring is THE HIGHLIGHT OF JOSH TRANK’S CAREER THUS FAR.
More about: El-P, Run the Jewels (Killer Mike and El-P)
