It’s the day after Ka died. The Brownsville rapper’s family posted to his Instagram that the 52-year-old artist was gone, unexpectedly. I’m leaning on the fence at Aqueduct Racetrack in Jamaica, Queens with Brooklyn rapper Elucid of the group Armand Hammer, whose new solo album “Revelator” has just arrived on Fat Possum. I ask if he had known Ka, a fellow independent rapper who made music that defied mainstream expectation.
“I shook his hand maybe twice,” Elucid says. “What I took from him was his sense of integrity in his music. It was always about ‘I’m doing me.’ This is what I like. This is what moves me. That’s the best advice that anybody doing anything creative can take for real. It has to move you first before anyone can pick up on that vibe from you.”
Elucid, born Chaz Hall, had likely internalized that lesson on his own already. But he’s happy to pay respect to fellow artists who embrace a “fuck everybody” DIY ethos that he sees as increasingly rare in New York rap. But for those like Ka who do it, “that shit is admirable and brave.”
No apologies
While “Revelator” is only Elucid’s third solo record (and first on Fat Possum), he’s largely made a name as one-half of Armand Hammer with billy woods, owner and proprietor of the independent rap label Backwoodz Studioz. Much like Ka, Armand Hammer has built a devoted fan base through their unflinching dedication to a sound and worldview of New York built from folklore of places hidden in plain sight. After a breakout record in 2021 produced entirely by The Alchemist called “Haram,” the Armand Hammer saga ascended with the widespread acclaim of 2023’s “We Buy Diabetic Test Strips.” But, their success took six albums over a decade to build. Woods says those 11 years made for a slower rise with a tougher grind, but “it put us in a place to act with a lot of autonomy at the end of it.”
“I know how to make this work,” he adds. “I’m not waiting for a label to give me a hand out. I’m also not confused when I go and sit down with a label and weigh the pros and cons because I know what I’m getting and what I’m giving up.”
Elucid also knows that path of breaking from the industry status quo comes with a built-in tax. Inside the Resorts World New York City casino next to the racetrack, the slot machine eats $40 on two pulls of the lever. We didn’t bother reading the instructions beforehand. Elucid laughs about the fleecing with a shrug.
“That’s the world. You don’t know, you get taxed,” he says. “No apologies.” He says the first 20 years of rap were like that for him. Living in Crown Heights, surviving on a bag of chips and water for the day, recording at night, and watching the block clear on Franklin Avenue by 10:45 p.m. because the neighborhood knew when police sweeps were timed. Taking losses, no album budget, and feeling the steeper climb to building a fanbase, while convincing himself it was worth the effort.
“It’s a real figuring your way,” he says. “Knowing what I had to offer. Believing it was valuable. Believing it was worthy. Believing it was good.”
‘My shit’s not in a vaccuum’
With “Revelator,” Elucid is at an innovative apex, and what he offers does not play it safe. His record, sometimes in abstract poetics, other times in the language of rebellion, calls into question our illusions around safety. He understands that formerly fringe ideas of New World Order conspiracy and Biblical revelations have moved into the center of discourse, and, as he raps on “Slum of a Disregard,” “believe what people say they are and do” because “abuse of power comes as no surprise.” Woods says Elucid’s music “goes where his spirit takes him” without consideration of people’s response or whether it might alienate him.
“That’s always gonna be where he starts,” woods says. “Working with Elucid, he was definitely that guy in terms of, if he doesn’t like a beat, or he’s not feeling it, it doesn’t matter who made the beat. He’s not gonna rap on it … He has to find these balances that feel right to him. He’s unafraid to embrace that.”
The record combines production from past collaborators like Michigan producer The Lasso, August Fanon and Child Actor with live instrumentation from drummer John Nellen and Irreversible Entanglements bassist Luke Stewart. Elucid’s version of integrity sounds like New York rap leaning into the dichotomy of industrial clang and quietude within the metropolis. Opener “The World Is Dog” is a no-knock raid, a minimalist poem over chaos, while the chopped-n-screwed, downtempo jazz of “In The Shadow of If” feels like the cautious solitude of being on an empty outer borough platform on a warm summer night. His songs invoke feelings about places that exist in New York — if you know it like he knows it.
“To me it also has an industrial vibe,” he says. “I like those sorts of sounds. I grew up in South Jamaica, you hear how many planes pass back and forth. The subways and elevated trains and shit. My music and my beats are composed from all these types of sounds.”
During a lull in the interview he says “It’s mad peaceful out here.” The sun is out in October and the only sounds are droning from a tanker watering the track and planes leaving JFK. The sounds of his life. Aqueduct Racetrack is where his mom took him to get cheap shoes at the flea market. He liked Lottos for the secret velcro pouch behind the logo. He kept coins in there and a collection of crack vial toppers with an awareness that different colors represented different drug crews or a new product. While this detail hasn’t made it into the music, Elucid’s style is rooted in the specificity of his experience and signaling to others who might also have lived it. He compares it to Raekwon and Ghostface on “Only Built For Cuban Linx,” and how their slang and references were coded to their neighborhood. When he chants “must find fried fish, it’s Friday” on “Hushpuppies,” he’s not alluding to a restaurant recommendation, but a family tradition.
“My shit is not in a vacuum,“ he says. “I could say ‘fried fish Friday’ and somebody will say my grandparents did that same shit too. This sorta insider [language] … I love that. The first thing with me with this rap writing is just telling the truth about myself.”
He now resides in Bed-Stuy, but his journey includes his grandparent’s house in Amityville where his uncle, DJ Stitches (who performed scratches on “World Is Dog”), knew De La Soul. He remembers Dave “Trugoy” Jolicoeur on his grandparent’s couch and thinking his “flattop with the locs” was dope. Fort Greene reminds him of being in love, while East New York is a mixture of the ghetto-by-day, but suburban quiet at night.
His transient life through various Black communities in Brooklyn has always been positive. As he suggests on “In The Shadow Of If,” it’s the harrowing presence of “too many flags, one too many flags, seeing all those flags outside the city made me nervous” when he leaves the city that triggers a sense of inherent danger. Twice he lived in his family’s brownstone in Crown Heights, which had a way of reminding him how far he’s come as an artist and person. Particularly, the hallway mirror that’s been there since forever. He’s seen two versions of himself in that mirror, a reflection that finds its way into “14.4” with “I live between two mirrors.” Notably in that song he boasts “make do with less was yesterday / I’m blessed to say that’s dead.” Earlier in the album, he flexes that these days he’s “squatting in a Barcelona hotel room playing ‘Wu-Tang Forever’.”
“I was so broke 20 years ago,” he says of his two stays in the Crown Heights brownstone. “I’m not rich at all. But I’m a very different person from that time. In the inverse, I have two children and a wife. I’m going to Latvia to rap.”
DIY to death
Within the lore of Ka is the direct-to-consumer approach he took as an independent artist. He was known to post-up on a selected Saturday with a car full of albums and merch, ready to sell to whomever came through. His pop-up on September 28 at 104 Charlton Street was the last time fans would have the chance to buy a record directly from Ka and shake his hand. That out-the-trunk approach is integral to independent rappers whose margins are slim, and only get slimmer when factoring in boxing and shipping costs. As Elucid and I stand by the racetrack, we admired the crumbling infrastructure of the old grandstand. He starts talking about Ka and how there’s no record deals out there for artists in their lane. They have to make their own way.
“The whole idea of selling out is so different from what I knew from growing up,” says Elucid. “You can say Ka did not sell out. That’s still cool to me. It’s really ill. You got your own vision. You don’t take any handouts. You play the game your own way.”
Last March, Armand Hammer held a pop-up at Blue In Green in Soho for the exclusive release of a vinyl-only album “BLK LBL,” which features the song “Instant Transfer” that also made it onto “Revelator.” Only a few blocks away from where Ka would ultimately hold his final pop-up. While woods wasn’t thinking of Ka when they chose to do the pop-up, coincidentally Ka was a long-time customer at the store and friend to the owner. Elucid remembers he “hopped out the car all smiles” when he pulled up to a line of fans that wrapped around two blocks. While the loss of Ka is irreplaceable, Elucid and Armand Hammer prove the future of independent rap in New York remains secured and protected by noble guardians.
“We’re not gonna do the Shaq and Kobe thing,” woods says of the longevity of the group. “I’m trying to get every championship, man.”
The post With his third solo album, ‘Revelator,’ Elucid carries the torch appeared first on Brooklyn Magazine.
