The DUSK Issue: ELUCID
Words & Photos by Easton Parks
“I just wanna do what feels good for me,” says ELUCID.
New York rapper and producer ELUCID has grown accustomed to avant-garde, experimental hip hop labels. “It’s not like traditional pop music or structures, but I don’t really think about it while I’m making it,” ELUCID says.
REVELATOR, ELUCID’s third solo album, was released last October to these types of genre tags and they’re pretty on point. REVELATOR is packed with phased crisp drums, hypnotic refrains and harsh, noisy soundscapes that are unlike any hip hop album this decade. REVELATOR places a new importance on live instrumentation throughout the project. John Nellen is an especially important collaborator, among others, for many of the tracks that give the album its chaotic flavor. A careful balance between instrumentation and samples leads to an advanced sonic palette that can bring together fans of both post-punk and hip hop.
“REVELATOR, for whatever reason, is attracting a lot of musicians, specifically jazz, but jazz that floats with ambient and even noise. It pulls in these sorts of people in New York that are attracted to the sound,” says ELUCID.
ELUCID is also one-half of the abstract hip hop duo Armand Hammer alongside billy woods. Together they released We Buy Diabetic Test Strips in 2023, which fell into many a music fan's favorite albums of the year. Knowing woods for about 12 years, their chemistry is bar none. ELUCID says, “Me and woods have a special connection when it comes to this music shit, we’re able to not step on each other’s toes and instead learn from each other.”
BLK LBL, a 2024 vinyl-only album release by Armand Hammer piqued my interest regarding a response to streaming with physical media, a shrinking demand. Referring to his song with woods, “Instant Transfer,” that appears on both BLK LBL and REVELATOR ELUCID explains, “Scarcity is never the go-to for us. I want these things to be heard as widely as possible, so we’ll take that one and put it on REVELATOR.”
The use of alternative music release formats remains a beneficial avenue with INTERFERENCE PATTERN. This Bandcamp exclusive was released in late December 2024 by ELUCID, and it exists as a sound collage-like mixtape. “Music has been so cheapened; I feel like what I do and what the people I surround myself with do, we do at such a level that it sort of demands whatever we say that it demands,” says ELUCID.
“When you’re able to do high-level anything, you’re talking clothes, you’re talking food, you’re talking music, you’re talking drugs; if it’s high-level, people should be paying a premium for it,” ELUCID adds. “You can trust and ensure that I’m spending this amount of money because I know I’m gonna get an experience that I want out of it.”
Despite previous collaborations with great producers like The Alchemist, Kenny Segal and Messiah Musik, ELUCID still regularly self-produces his music. “I still record in Garageband, I make beats in Audacity, like very low tech. I might have a sampler to do things and trigger shit but it’s pretty low-tech.”
Themes of power spill out across ELUCID’s music, whether in commentary on those that abuse it or in balancing power and artistry. Power doesn’t come without consequences, so what you do to mediate your use of power is extremely important to ELUCID.
“I’m thinking about power in my interpersonal dynamics, my relationships with my lover, with my friends, with my children, in my place as an artist with this voice and people listen to me. There’s a power in that and it’s heavy,” ELUCID adds. “I’m trying to use my voice responsibly in a way that doesn’t hurt other people. I wanna pull me up. I think with power it’s very easy to knock people down.”
ELUCID continues to reflect on power, “It’s been normalized in a way, you see it anywhere from politicians to artists, to anyone else in between. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, this shit is like a head trip, it’s an ego trip. People feed you all sorts of things to boost you up and I don’t want to believe the hype. I want to remember who I am with whatever I got going on.”