Skip to content
News

El-P Accidentally Tweets His Phone Number, Gets Texted By ‘Weird Bastards’

El-P Twitter Phone Number Accidental Texts Missed Calls

Some people get hacked. Others get trolled by their friends. El-P just hit the wrong button. The Brooklyn rapper-producer meant to send a direct message to a friend on Thursday and wound up Tweeting his phone number out to the world. After a couple of minutes, he deleted the original post (paraphrased: “Hey man. Been wanting to catch up with you. 347 703 1444.”) and immediately set out to change his digits.

“I was trying to find a contact number for a director I’d met through Pitchfork TV,” El told SPIN. “I didn’t have his contact, so I saw Ryan [Schreiber] from Pitchfork pop up and I thought, ‘Fuck it, why don’t I go right to the source?’ and wound up putting my number on the Internet. I’m nothing if not savvy. I did that with an email address last year. I don’t know what happened.”

In the meantime the dystopia-obsessed, generally misanthropic MC born Jamie Meline was surprisingly kinda sorta tickled by the whole thing. “haha this is actually hilarious,” he wrote, “big up to the thousand people texting and calling me. you have about 5 minutes left on that number.” He then decided to embrace the moment, and tweeted the number out again: “text me while you can! my number is 347 703 1444. for about 1 minute.”

“What’s the point of being pissed at your own stupidity,” Meline continued by phone (from his new number). “Futility is something that I shake my fist at too much. I’m the type of dude who if a nuclear bomb was headed to the city, I wouldn’t run out and freak. I’d probably take my clothes off and sit on the roof. There was no point in any other approach.”

Moments later, he wrote, “aaaaaaaaaaand its over. thanks for all the texts, although i would have appreciated a few tit shots.” He then added, “for the record, that was 52 missed calls and 321 texts messages. couple people tried to face time me too.” The final takeaway? “that unexpectedly made my day. thanks to all you weird bastards who texted me. sadly (ahem) i am no longer receiving them.”

Shortly after sharing his favorite messages with SPIN, El posted the weirdest of the bunch to Tumblr. He said that most of them were genuinely nice affirmations of his exceptional work (see Cancer for Cure and Killer Mike’s R.A.P. Music), but his top 10 were the ones that made him laugh: Lil B lyrics, a fake dis from Quincy Jones, an actual message from Das Racist’s Dapwell, and this: “Deep Space 9-Inch Cock.” (That last one’s a SPIN exclusive.)

https://youtube.com/watch?v=dNJFq6VjHJI%3Frel%3D0

In speaking to SPIN, El also confirmed that he and Killer Mike are “three-quarters of the way” through a brand new full-length, which he says “is different than both of our previous records.” Regarding his Stepson side project with Nick Thorburn (Unicorns, Islands, Mister Heavenly), he promises they’ll be hitting the studio after the touring season wraps to make an album which will be “pretty fucked up.”