Album: El-P

For a once revolutionary form of musical expression, hip-hop has proven remarkably easy to emasculate, a neutering only made possible by the eager co-operation of record labels, radio and MTV in promoting the dead-end culture of gangsta-rap at the expense of all other rap strains.

But look a little deeper then the headline-friendly posturing of death profiteers like 50 Cent, and you'll find a whole subculture trying to reclaim hip-hop as a more varied expression of contemporary life. Definitive Jux, the label helmed by former Company Flow mastermind El Producto, has been at the forefront of this movement for several years now, releasing groundbreaking albums in which anger and intelligence are combined to devastating effect. As a producer, El-P is the only true heir of Public Enemy's pioneering Bomb Squad team, creating jagged, cacophonous backing tracks whose samples, scratches, synths and breakbeats collide with a weird, chaotic logic vividly evocative of the urgent, angry, fragmented quality of New York streetsound. In places here, it dissolves into little more than a brittle barrage of beats with a patina of chaos, a sound both repulsive and magnetic.

He's equally uncompromising and confrontational as a rapper, taking mighty scimitar-swipes at everything from New York traffic, the music industry and old girlfriends to God, dangerous kids, and scientists who can't be trusted. Along the way, he offers a damning indictment of his own culture, dissing MCs "who went from battle raps to gun talk like we ain't noticed the change yet".

But although El-P clearly has a fiery intelligence and a bottomless fund of lyrical bile, there are lines poking out of his diatribes which reveal a sensitivity quite shocking in these surroundings, such as his admission in "Smithereens" that "Everything's exactly as it seems, and it seems that I am crying", and his revelation in the dystopian prison fantasy "Habeas Corpses" that "I'm the first to touch her without gloves on / She's the first to kiss me without crying".

Joining El-P in his bilious crusade are Def Jux stalwarts including Mr Lif and Aesop Rock, alongside rock guitarists from Zwan and The Mars Volta on "Tasmanian Pain Coaster", Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor on "Flyentology", the sarcastic dressing-down of an ignorant God, and most surprising of all, the soothing tone of Cat Power, who brings a femme fatale charm to "Poisenville Kids No Wins". Not what you might expect from a hip-hop album, but this is no ordinary hip-hop album.

DOWNLOAD THIS: 'Smithereens', 'The Overly Dramatic Truth', 'Flyentology', 'Run The Numbers'