Album Cover via ELUCID/Instagram
If reading novels as “research” for the novel he’s writing counted towards the actual writing of said book, Will Schube would have written so many books.
ELUCID’s music is haunted by regional, political, and personal history. His 2022 album, I Told Bessie, is a eulogy unearthed from family archives, a mournful tribute to his dear grandmother. He felt Bessie everywhere. She emerged as a spirit that navigated across his unrecognizably gentrified city and perched on his shoulder. The music was a way to speak to her, somehow.
The New York rapper told me in 2022: “I don’t know if you ever had those ideas that you kind of ignore…then one day…literally you can feel it, you can touch it and smell it.” Making a record about his grandmother wasn’t a choice he made but something that happened to him. ELUCID as conduit, summoner of ancestors.
It’s the role he also generally occupies in Armand Hammer, his group with billy woods — perhaps the best duo currently rapping. ELUCID is a mystic with a machine-gun voice. He’s possessive of omens found on the damp tiles of subway platforms. He sees stories in the eyes of bleary-eyed bodega clerks. On “I Keep A Mirror in My Pocket” from 2023’s We Buy Diabetic Test Strips, ELUCID sees what we’re being sold: “Please no chocolate ganache on the damn cake.” How much frosting does it take to cover up the taste of decay?
ELUCID decided to burn it all to the ground on 2024’s REVELATOR, a noxious post-punk, post-industrial, post-everything explosion that looks for hope in collapse. He imagines the dancing that will be done after imperialism’s last gasp — while mourning the toll this evil has wrought on multiple generations.
Bessie was the closest ELUCID got to seeing the great white light, deeply clarifying and utterly intoxicating but the sort of thing he only wanted to view once. REVELATOR is its counterpoint, less insular, angrier — a scream to protect the lives of this Earth. On “CCTV” he raps: “Bust through the walls/ To the victor spoils/ Even rebels gotta pause/ When blood spill so casually.” He seems to ask: How can those that inflict pain disassociate with such ease from the suffering they’ve created?
This is a metal album not in genre but in material, a world of brutalist buildings before that movie lead to a million perversions of the architectural concept. The drums explode because the world is blowing up; ELUCID growls and howls because there are only so many words for pain.
As we discuss in the below interview, he looked to Nine Inch Nails and Miles Davis to master the dynamics of REVELATOR. He recruited usual suspects August Fanon, The Lasso, and Child Actor to handle the beats, but drummer John Nellen and Irreversible Entanglements bassist Luke Stewart help build the identity this album claims its own. REVELATOR sounds like what Death Grips thought it was, but ELUCID is a generational MC and Ride did something…else. While there are bursts of 70s dub (“14.4”) and minimalist jazz trio compositions (“In The Shadow Of If”), the thrash and noise and angst is the real show.
While ELUCID has often favored reinterpreting lived experience through shrouded verses of poetry and elusive impressions, REVELATOR is tethered to the cold dead Earth, boots caked in mud and hands almost glowing with grime. He explained this tonal shift, saying: “This record is just frustration spitting back at the music. That’s what it felt like, kind of licking wounds, but also spitting back.” When they go low, knock ‘em to the damn ground.
Zulu Beats Radio Show (WHBI (105.9 FM)
ELUCID: YouTube is amazing in that way. They’ll just have people upload old shows from the show. To be able to go back and listen to a radio show, a college radio show from 1981 is kind of amazing. You can see the fingerprints of what was happening there in that rap scene in ’81, and you can still see it in 2024. I’m not even exaggerating. You go back and you’ll hear a song from the early eighties where they’re playing Rodney-O & Joe Cooley. That’s the beat that Kendrick and Future and Metro Boomin’ used that set off that beef. That record is so old, but they were on the Zulu Beats radio show. It is so ill.
Were you queuing up old shows while recording REVELATOR?
ELUCID: Yeah, it was just something that was inspiring me. I’d be on the road and music grounds you on the road. I’m in small cities, places in Switzerland, and obviously not a lot of people look like me, and people that might look like me are not from the US. That might be from another part of the world, Black folks from another part of the world or whatever. Music is a companion in that way. I listen to a lot of old school rap. I always love old school rap because it reminds me of childhood and it’s warm to me. I listen to a lot of old school rap on the road, and I got into the WHBI wormhole. I immediately hear DOOM. when I listen. I connected DOOM to WHBI, the way they were mixing and transitioning and sampling commercials and cartoons and little voiceover spots. DOOM was doing all that. He was obviously influenced by this too. I just got into that bag really quickly.
Nine Inch Nails — “March of the Pigs”
When did you first discover NIN?
ELUCID: A long time ago, but you can discover something and eventually find something to latch onto. I feel like I got into Nine Inch Nails and then maybe more industrial sounding adjacent type things shortly after. You end up listening to Alien Sex Fiend and Ministry. It’s interesting listening to things 20 years later with different sorts of experience and different sorts of ears. I’m hearing it differently and I feel like I skipped over “March of the Pigs” when I first heard it. I’m not sure why, but now it just hits differently.
Working on this record I was playing with a live drummer, and the thing about “March of the Pigs” is that those drums set off the song. They have this intensity that I was reaching for, it hit that peak that I needed, that I know I needed for the record. Then I was just watching the video and it’s like, ‘Damn, Trent is killing it.’ I just love the way he moves. I love the intensity of the song. There’s something about the breakdown.
I was interested in dynamics making this record. I wanted things to be loud, but I wanted other things to be soft. Reznor does both of those things, which I think a lot of alternative bands did. He could be screaming and yelping, and then it has that bridge or the chorus that’s so tender and sweet. Then they cut all that shit away and bring back the brimstone. I just thought that was really ill. I love that in music, those sorts of dynamics.
Does that happen in rap as often?
ELUCID: I think it happens in rap, but I think it might happen in different ways. The most obvious example of the dynamics and rap is Kendrick Lamar. Kendrick Lamar does it so often, and it may not be with the production, but the way that he records his voice and then starts to layer and stack. The way he does that, it builds on an incline until it reaches an emotional peak, and then he’ll break it and the song will go somewhere else. And as I’m saying this, I’m thinking immediately of, what’s the one back to this Beef with Drake? What’s the one that Alchemist produced?
With more traditional rap, music dynamics are vocal based and maybe emotion based too?
ELUCID: Yeah. It’s all about not disturbing the groove, right? You don’t want to throw off the MC or even the listener. You keep the consistent beat, but then you vary the tone and the emotion with the vocals.
On this record, you don’t seem concerned with interrupting the groove.
ELUCID: I don’t want to play by those conservative rat rules.
Miles Davis — “Rated X”
When did you first encounter this song?
ELUCID: Last spring. I heard it via the TIDAL Daily Discovery algorithm, if we’re being honest. People love to hate on the algorithm, but my only counter for that is it just spits back versions of what you put into it. You’re training AI. We forget this. We’re training this motherfucker. This song came on and I was blown away. It was 8:30 in the morning after I dropped my kid off from school. I rolled up a spliff and I was gone for the whole day. I could not stop listening to that song. I had no background information. I don’t know who played what at first, and I’m just waiting. I know Miles Davis plays the trumpet, but there’s no trumpet here. What’s happening? Then I found out he’s the one playing the organ, which is my favorite part in the song. It’s just vamping up and down and doing this dynamic move from soft to loud and then it breaks apart, and then he brings it back in. It’s just masterful. How are they actually doing this?
Are you a big Miles fan?
ELUCID: Yeah. My favorite era of Miles is when he went electric fusion. Starting with Bitches Brew, then there’s On the Corner which I love too. Whenever Miles got real Black as he calls it. He met that woman and she turned him on to so much stuff. That’s the most exciting Miles era. Behind every great artist is a great woman. Shout up to my wife.
How do you think Miles’ approach makes its way onto REVELATOR?
ELUCID: The first thing that I loved about the song and the first thing that I said about the Nine Inch Nails song was the intensity. I know that I needed to nail that to separate it from I Told Bessie, which was introverted and spiritual. It felt very reflective. There was a reverence there, and I needed that. I needed that because people boxed me into a sort of thing. I wanted to show that I could do the reflective stuff, but when I made this record, I wanted it to be a reflection of exactly what I was going through. It’s been a wild year for me. It’s been trying times for me personally, and also just looking at the world. This record is just frustration spitting back at the music. That’s what it felt like, kind of licking wounds, but also spitting back. I knew I needed intensity in the production to make it what it is.
I worked with Jon Nellen on drums, and that was the first key. I would sample little drum parts from Get Up with It. I’d ask Jon to play something similar, to replicate a break. I just brought in some of my favorite breaks and he tried to mimic them.
Meridian Brothers — “Mandala”
ELUCID: I don’t know anything about them, but I would guess they’re some wild motherfuckers. I would love to party with these guys. The song is really cool. It’s got this cumbia beat and they play with these strange voices that sound like a stone frog from 500 years ago. It’s just a feeling that this song gives me. This is what I love about music, man. I love it so much that I played it for my kid. He liked it and I added it to his playlist.
Does your kid like a lot of music you show him?
ELUCID: He does. He’s pretty receptive. We started off with pop music like Michael Jackson. That was the clear cut favorite from day one. Then it was like, ‘Well, let’s listen to some rap man.’ It’d be old school rap, Tribe, some stuff older than that where they’re counting, they’re spelling, stuff that kids would like. You know what I mean? So old school. Old school, very old school rap. Recently he came up to me and was like, “Dad, I got to be honest. I don’t really like Michael Jackson anymore.” He was also like, “I don’t like Sonic anymore.” He loves Sonic the Hedgehog, the game. Then he said, “Don’t be mad, but I kind of don’t like your music.” Totally unprompted.
So now he likes the Meridian Brothers. Did you take anything away from this and apply it to REVELATOR.
ELUCID: I think this might be something for a future record, or maybe just excitement. I listen to a lot of music. I enjoy some of the music I listen to. I listen to a lot of music I don’t like. But music that brings real excitement makes it worth it — music that actually makes you excited as if you had never heard music before. There’s something really special about that. That’s the rare thing. This song made me feel like a child, like I’ve never heard music before, but now I just want to hear this and move. That’s special. I’m trying to bottle that up. Who knows what that could be for, but that’s a real ass feeling for me.
