While it sounded powerfully at-odds with mainstream hip-hop at the time, Company Flow’s abstract-rap watershed feels more like a link between the free-spirited, Stretch & Bobbito-cultivated East Coast battle lyricism of the early-mid ’90s and the underground renaissance that the indies would build in its wake. El-P in young-and-hungry mode sounds like a maniacal cadence-warping death preacher on the mic and behind the boards, while the intense listen, goddammit directness of co-rapper Bigg Jus set the agenda for decades-later heirs like billy woods and Elucid.