GingerSlim checks in with Elucid to talk about his work with billy woods and Milo, religion, musical influences and more. The interview has been lightly edited for clarity and context.
Let’s start with the Nostrum Grocers collaboration with Milo from 2018 and how that come about; had you guys been planning on working on something together for a while?
No it was a really spontaneous thing. From the moment I met Milo, we had an instant connection and then one day we were like, “Yo we should do an album…”. He was in New York for a couple of shows, we went to Willie Green’s studio and did the album, like that was it [laughs]. And we just put out a single not so long ago and that was the same thing – I went up to Maine, did the song, liked the song, did the video – 24 hours that was it! I mean that’s kinda like our process, we communicate back and forth through emails and texts, see each other when we’re in the right city; so yeah, it’s pretty natural.
And is that often your approach to collaborations, or is this set apart from the rest?
I don’t tend to work on a lot of collaboration. I have done in the past, but I’ve been trying to narrow it down and now I’m only creating with people who genuinely inspire me. Milo was one of those dudes and of course billy woods is one of those dudes. So if either of them ever say to me we should work on something together, the answer is always yes, no question. I do wanna collab more, so there are a couple of people I’m going to be working on some things with. They haven’t come to fruition yet cos it’s moving a little slower, but yeah there’s a couple of things in the pipeline.
As I understand it, you had been putting out mixtapes for about 10 years before you released Save Yourself, and that was all self-released material. What was it that eventually prompted you to start working with a label?
They just asked me if I wanted to put a record out. I did a show and (billy) woods was there. He said he was doing an album and wanted me to be on it, so that became “Freedmen’s Bureau” on History Will Absolve Me. Then from there we just stayed in contact, until Backwoodz said, “You wanna put an album out?”. I said okay cool, but it’s gotta be on vinyl though. They agreed and that’s it, there’s Save Yourself.
You and woods seem to have found a very good formula for working together. Have you noticed any changes in your creative approach since you two started collaborating?
I think I’ve grown as an artist in general, as a solo artist. But then thinking about working as a team player, working with woods, how we might make a song is we’ll get a whole batch of beats, each have the same batch, and then he’ll demo his favorites and I’ll demo mine, then we’ll link up, play them and be like, “That’s cool, that’s not cool”, whatever. But then if he’s got something that’s really fire, then it’s like well how do I counter that? You know what I mean? Like I could come in the exact same way, but that doesn’t make it an interesting song. So I think maybe thinking like a team player, like what I can contribute, rather than what I can come up with all on my own, is easier; yeah it’s easier for sure [laughs]. So yeah, as a team player is where I’ve probably grown most.
I read that your parents were religious, and you were involved with the church in your youth, but you didn’t particularly enjoy being there. What sort of impact, if any, do you think that upbringing had on your music?
Well I feel like you can never really run away from your past, that’s your default. The way that you were raised from zero to the age you leave your care-giver, that’s all you know, and that was a strong 18 years for me, right? And then from 18 to now, is just me forging my own path. I already had inklings of who I was, and things I believed, and things I disagreed with how I was raised, while I was there. So, at 14 being super conscious, like no I don’t want to go that way, I’m going to go this way. It’s still in the music though, it’s an immediate reference cos I know a lot of The Bible, a LOT. It’s also one of the greatest books ever written, if you remove the religiosity from it. You don’t have to believe, but there are some amazing fucking stories in that book, with super ill language, and I’m just drawn to how things are presented in that way. I like the idea of parables, I think that’s a really slick way to teach, you know? I can’t get away from it, but I’ve gotten away from it, if that makes sense?
And is that interest limited to Catholicism?
It’s not Catholic…
Oh my bad, sorry I meant Christianity.
Yeah so it’s Pentecostal, like a Black American spin on Catholicism or Protestantism, it’s a little different. Like I know Catholicism is super big, but like usually there’s no instruments there. My church was super lively; they had an amazing band, with musicians who played with some of the top 90’s RnB and soul acts worldwide. These guys were so talented and the choirs were amazing, so just growing up and seeing that, I didn’t want to be a performer at the time, but I was exposed to that kind of life, you know?
So do you think that’s where it all stems from?
I don’t know, I just knew I was a writer, and then the writing and the poetry spawned into this rap thing, and then all of a sudden, I find myself on stage. And then like learning to be comfortable on stage, learning to be able to present my work to a room full of people; a rap show is very different from a poetry reading [laughs].
And does that interest extend into other religious and philosophical areas?
Oh for sure. That was the thing with Christianity, it was super limiting and it didn’t provide all the answers I wanted. It also left out many other schools of thought about philosophy and spirituality that I was interested in. I guess I don’t subscribe to any religion right now, but I respect a lot of them and there are jewels to be learned in all of them. And lowkey they’re all very similar, they come from very similar origins. You can even go beyond the three main world religions – Christianity, Islam and Judaism – you can go beyond that and start reading things in Ancient Egypt and be like, “Oh that’s where those stories originally came from!”. The story of Jesus is not an original story, it was told thousands of years before he ‘walked the planet’. So that’s when I started getting into this universalist approach to spirituality and thought.
Now for me, one of your most intriguing releases was Valley of Grace, which had the accompanying film. What was the inspiration behind that project?
Ah, man, basically being in South Africa. I went to Johannesburg and Cape Town in the summer of 2015, maybe ‘16, and my wife was there, she was still my girlfriend then, and she was working at a law centre, working towards protecting sex workers in South Africa. So being there, she’s at work for at least 8 hours a day, and I’m in the flat just hanging out, you know? So I go out, I get lost; I find weed, I go back; I drink a lot of coffee, I make music. The she comes home, I cook dinner, we hang out – do the same shit over and over. So I was felt like super free, like super, super free. I love that feeling of like being in a place where I don’t speak any of the five languages that are spoken there, that real alien feeling. Yeah I really like that, and so I started dipping my toes in and that’s really what became Valley of Grace; everything in South Africa, when I came back to New York at the end of the summer and I recorded it all in my house, that’s what became the record.
And is that audiovisual medium something you would like to experiment with further? I know you were involved with the Paraffin video too.
Oh yeah totally. That’s the latest thing for me, definitely. I didn’t have anything to do with the filming for Paraffin, that was all Joseph, but I did all the music and the little cuts, so I’m very interested in scoring. So I think on the next project I’ll have a greater hand in the score, and also like the visual side of it. I really liked how that Paraffin video turned out.
Yeah it blends with the music perfectly.
Joseph just really gets our vision, he really gets it. He did the video for “Barbarians” too. He really gets what the fuck we’re trying to do out here.
What’s next for you? Any projects lined up?
I’ve been working on things, but nothing as a project. You’ll see it though, you’ll know [laughs]. Yeah, I don’t really work around projects like that; even with Valley of Grace I was just making songs and then when I got back to The States, woods was like, “So what you been doing over there?”, so we’re talking about the music and he said I should let him hear it sometime, so I did and then he was like, “Oh this is a record, you should put this out.”. Then we cut probably six or seven songs, put the rest on a record and that was Valley of Grace.
That’s cool though because normally if someone is working on a project, they will be looking for some sort of cohesion, but you’re doing it purely organically and more spontaneously.
Yeah, I don’t believe in that, I don’t look for that. It all came from my mind, so however cohesive, or not, that’s who I am; that’s what my mind was going through at that exact time. If it doesn’t sound cohesive that means I was fucking crazy [laughs]. And that’s okay! That’s where I was at that particular time. That’s what I love about albums. It’s a clear definition of who you are, what you were thinking, what you were going through in this particular place in time. It’s so pure, it’s such an ill caption to me. That’s why I can’t wait to actually put out the second record, you know? I don’t know when it will be, but I know it’s going to be really ill. The new Armand Hammer album is coming too and I think that’s going to be a nice surprise; people are going to be very surprised by that.
Okay so aside from the church’s influence, what were your earliest musical memories?
Oh man. Well both my parents are musicians and they weren’t always super churchy, that happened when I was a kid, so there was a shift, you know? But even after that they still played a lot of things. They had a crazy vinyl collection and in that collection you had things like Sly & The Family Stone, Funkadelic, Al Green, James Brown, Denise Williams, Stevie Wonder; like just very ‘from the soil’, black American soul music, funk music, RnB music. So I grew up on all that shit on vinyl and then my uncle was a DJ, so that was my first experience of rap as a child, like 5 or 6 years old. There are videos of my breakdancing at people’s weddings as a child, so rap has always been here, you know what I mean? So yeah, he got me into Rakim, Public Enemy, BDP, De La Soul, all that era; he was there putting me onto it when I was super young. And then as well I am just the sort of person to venture out and explore beyond these genres, these boundaries; so when the internet came along, like much later on, it was like oh shit, now there’s stuff like Bad Brains, just things outside of rap. Or even getting deeper into regional rap. Growing up in New York City, but being a fan of things like Outkast and Goodie Mob, before they were like these established names, when they were still on the come up. Like those first albums, I was a big fan of them when they dropped.
And do you remember the point you realized that’s what you wanted to do?
I still don’t feel like I’ve made that decision. Things just kinda come along and I do them. If someone asks, I do it. But I’ve never sat down and thought right this is what I want to do, I’ve never had that conversation with myself, it’s just sort of presented itself. I do what I do, I never actively pursued rap that way. Like I have a whole other life outside of the music thing. That’s why it’s a blessing that people recognize what the fuck I do out here, you know? I’ve got a song on Shit Don’t Rhyme No More called “1010 Wins” and it goes like, “I’m the man who the man say is the man”; I did that song every night on the last run and that shit has never felt more true, honestly. And that’s not even gassing myself up, it’s actually true. Like some of your favorites out here text me my own lyrics and be like, “Yo you’re fucking dope”, like the world’s favorites, and it just feels good that people are out here seeing me. And the past few years, those records we’ve put out, the Armand Hammer shit went off, the Nostrum shit went off, so I’m very curious to see what’s going to happen in the next 365 days. Yeah, it feels good man [laughs].
Yeah man, I bet.
Well you out here, man! I see you on Twitter, you’ve been supporting for the longest time, so it feels dope to be here and like see you in the flesh, and know that this person has been checking for what I do, that shit is ill, thank you.
No, thank you man, and that’s me done anyway, so that’s a good point to end on [both laugh].
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Buy Elucid’s music here, and follow him on Twitter and Instagram.
Gingerslim has been a hip-hop fan since 1994 and has written for various blogs and websites since around 2006. During that time he has contributed to The Wire, style43, Think Zebra, Headsknow, Front Magazine and more. His main interests in rap are UK hip-hop and the underground movement in America, with a focus on Rhymesayers Entertainment and the once mighty Def Jux label. He lives in Bristol and has a beard. All other details are sketchy at best. Follow him here.