ELUCID thinks he might be paying too much attention to social media. The New York rapper and one half of hip-hop duo Armand Hammer, with billy woods, bristles at the idea that listeners might perceive his music as being in one specific lane. But he also uses those perhaps misplaced expectations as an opportunity for creative defiance, much as he did with the warmly introspective I Told Bessie in 2022, an album named for his grandmother.
Two years later, ELUCID has made another radical shift with Revelator, out now via Fat Possum. It’s at various points his most cacophonous and intense album, one reflective of his own frustrations with systems, institutions and the world at large, but it’s not without hope or warmth itself. It’s not always an easy or accessible listen, and though it has its moments of immediacy, like leadoff track “The World Is Dog,” it’s not intended for instant satisfaction, but rather the kind of album he hopes listeners will take the time to sit with and take in without automatic judgment.
“I feel like there’s this real dominant attitude, culture-wise, that people are kind of arrogant listeners,” ELUCID says from his home via Zoom. “We feel like we know everything really quickly. There’s’ a lot happening and we don’t have a lot of time to leisurely do things. But I think it’s really important to respect art, and yes pay for it, but when you encounter it, have an open mind. Suspend judgments and just receive things, even if you don’t understand it. You know what I mean? All art doesn’t have power, but some people are making things that have genuine, transformative power, that has the ability to meet you in the place you’re in.”
We spoke to ELUCID about new album Revelator, albums as time capsules, venting frustrations, and finding sources of hope.
Treble: Revelator feels like an album with a real sense of purpose to it. Was there an overarching idea that you were working from?
ELUCID: When I make records, it’s usually not an overarching thing. I run on instinct. I didn’t know what kind of production I wanted or needed. As much intention that I had in the beginning was I wanted to produce it. But I quickly figured out, well, sample clearance is going to be an issue, so I made a detour. And once I made a detour, I sank into what Revelator became. The way that I work is “what’s the feeling of the day?” I kind of like that freedom as you spend time making an album over a year, and it becomes a snapshot of your sayings and doings for that time period. That album came to represent that for me. There’s a lot of frustration on this record. It feels like spitting back at the world. It feels like thrashing out. And that shows up, via the audio, the beats itself, and the content of the rhymes.
Treble: It’s a much noisier record than I Told Bessie. Were you looking to have the sound mirror that frustration?
E: Yeah, I guess so, but I always start with the music and then the lyrics will follow. So I guess what you’re saying, but the inverse. It is very different from Bessie. That was a different period in time. It’s a much more introspective sort of album, and this was more outward, lashing out. I guess I kind of feel like I needed that. Making Bessie, I kind of felt like fans, or listeners, or critics didn’t think I’d be able to make that sort of record. That’s what I get for listening to social media. (Laughs) And yeah, so I kind of made that sort of introspective record, and they didn’t know I could make. This needed to be what it is for right now, for my life, which is in a different space, and the world in general. Especially toward the middle and the end of the record, when the album started coming together for real and it became less about a connection of songs and more about seeing connections and messages that repeated. There’s that, and there’s looking at the world and seeing my place in it, and being able to make a couple of statements that are bigger than me. So I took that opportunity.
Treble: There’s more live instrumentation on the record, as there was on the last Armand Hammer album, We Buy Diabetic Test Strips. At what part in the process does that come in?
E: This is a little different than Test Strips, in that i would come to Jon [Nellen, co-producer] with ideas. I would have loops that I made or things that I recorded on my phone, out in the streets, maybe have it looped and chopped up and say “what do you think about this?” It always starts with that, bringing it to John and then opening up the box and then start working in the workshop. It’s a little different than Test Strips, which was like, put a bunch of musicians in a room, who don’t really know each other, give them vague instructions and have them play for four hours. So this was a little more intentional in a particular way.
Treble: Do you like to challenge or stretch yourself vocally when you’re working on something new?
E: Yeah, I want to. But also I don’t want to try too hard. (Laughs) I want to be comfortable in the writing and then the performance is a different sort of a thing. That can vary based on the day. That can vary based on the mood. You can see a lot of bands where the live version is different than the studio version. I think going into a studio, usually the lyrics are written if I’m ready to record. And it’s like how am I feeling? I might record this way today, and then next week have a totally different feeling, different accents, might be tighter in different moments. And just wanting to be free in the performance, which might be what you recognize as me pushing myself. Luckily we were able to make a couple of moments where it’s bigger than us, like “The World Is Dog” or “Ikebana,” especially the stuff with Jon, because there’s a nice back-and-forth where I can do what I do but I also get that immediate reaction from someone in the room. I can be on the mic and he’ll react or respond—it’s nice to get that play-by-play in the moment.
Treble: As much anger and frustration that there is on this record, there’s also a lot of hope. Is it important for you to kind of have one to balance out the other?
E: Yeah, I think that kind of shines through for me in a few different things I’ve made over the years. I think that’s really important. Living in the world is hard enough for so many people. For me to make music that’s 1,000 percent gloom is the easy route. And what I’ve found, because I’ve done it, I’ve made music for a long time, but people love that. People love the doom and the gloom and the blankest part of everything but that’s not healthy for myself, to dwell in this nothingness and nihilism. For me, as a creative person, that’s not really helpful. Mental health wise, it’s not what it is for me. So I’m not sure when I made that conscious decision not to be 1,000 percent in that direction, but I want to tell the whole story. And it’s rare, when you tell a story, that it’s all going to be one color. It’s all this, there’s never any other possibility. And that’s boring to me. There’s detail, there’s nuance, and there’s no way this could all be one color. I see purple, I see orange, I see a lot of black, sure, but there are other ways to look at it as well. And that’s just looking at it abstractly. In just thinking about the practical every day history of a black man in the united states of america who understands the history of this country, folks have had it so much harder than me. When people say ‘Make America Great Again’, the era they’re referencing, I’m not that far removed from the total subjugation that black folks have felt in this country. If I could just imagine what people that hve lived through the horrors that have been like in this country, fuck it, it’s all for naught, I may not even be here. So just looking at it from those different angles, it’s a conscious thing, but I do want to tell the truth.
Treble: Is it a cathartic experience for you?
E: Yeah, making music is completely cathartic. And the way it lashes out, being able to get up over these wild, uptempo sounds. It makes me want to drive fast. It makes me want to move a little faster. It’s comfortable for me to sit in the pocket with deep grooves. I love deep grooves and I think this album has deep grooves. But a slower tempo of deep groove, a head-nod vibe, and I come from that, but I wanted to make something more uptempo and get the intensity of how I feel and how this world feels for me sometimes.
Treble: You mentioned how you’re in a very different place now than when you made I Told Bessie. And I saw you mention at the time that you were in a very different place than when you made Save Yourself. Do you find that you’ve changed a lot, personally, over that span of time?
E: Yeah, completely. I’m the same person, of course, but as pop culture speak loves to say, I’ve been doing the work. (Laughs) Doing the work on myself. I’ve grown up a lot in the past 10 years. I’ve grown into a person I maybe did not see 10 years ago, or if I saw maybe didn’t think I could do it. Just going back to family and real love, there’s a part of love that’s about accountability to the people that you say you love, and that has really stretched me to places that I did not think that I could go, or into this person that I could be. I think that’s real for me. I’ve grown up a lot in the last 10 years because of that.
Treble: You’ve been pretty busy—solo music, Armand Hammer, collaborations. How do you keep that all balanced?
E: I’m not sure I want to keep everything in balance. It’s always gonna be what it’s gonna be. But what I do want to do with all these collaborations, I think where I’m at now, as things start to spread out, what’s most important to me in art is telling the truth. I think that’s a good baseline for me to do all the things I want to do and are presented to me. If I can remember that as I create, then I think I can be OK. You’re working with so many different personalities, people have different agendas and ideas, and as I get…star’s rising or whatever you want to call it, more opportunities than I did years ago, I can see how it’s easy for people to separate from themselves and become sort of different people in not the best way. I want to stay grounded in this particular way that allows me to tap into myself completely. The old version of myself, this new version that’s developing, all these different sides, I need to be able to do it truthfully.
Treble: What gives you hope?
E: Oh man, I am a family man. I’m a family man. So that has been, for the past few years, a major source of hope. And before that I fell in love with this person who I have this family with. So maybe that’s when everything changed for me. That’s interesting. I never really thought about that, but that was about a decade ago. And that’s when things started to look very different in my life. So maybe that’s when. But those two things are my main sources of hope right now. It’s family. It’s love.
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