New York hip-hop experimentalist Elucid: ‘I like the harmony of the city. Everybody’s got a little solo’

Interview New York hip-hop experimentalist Elucid: ‘I like the harmony of the city. Everybody’s got a little solo’ Dashiell Lewis From a pocket of Zen in the Dream House installation, the rapper/producer talks about channelling the city’s perpetual din, whether solo or with Billy Woods as Armand Hammer S eated opposite me in the Dream House, New York rapper and producer Elucid leans against the wall, crosses his ankles and shuts his eyes. Perfumed by incense, the long-running installation in a Manhattan loft, from composer La Monte Young and artist Marian Zazeela, is an otherworldly experience: a fridge-sized speaker cabinet occupies each corner, and pink and purple stage lights illuminate curly mobiles hanging from the ceiling. Violet-tinted film covers the three west-facing windows, making it hard to tell what time it is, or if time is passing at all. Each speaker plays distinct parts of a long drone composition; the emphasis shifts as you tilt your head or move through the space. Eventually, Elucid gets up and slowly walks around, finding a spot to lie down and let it all wash over him. An hour later, as we sip cocktails in a nearby bar, he tells me that he drifted off a bit. This was his first visit to the Dream House in at least a decade, but his years of frequenting floatation tanks – at least once a season, always after coming home from tour – had him primed for the installation’s meditative properties. “It takes a minute to get into another space, but I definitely got there,” he says. As he settled into the cascading tone, his eyes closed, words like “engine room” and “turbine” came to mind, unconsciously mirroring his songwriting process. “Rappers always be like, ‘The beat tells me what to do,’” he says, and he is no different. “Sound has colour, emotion and force, and everyone who hears the same sound interprets it differently. I’ve developed a sound vocabulary, and oftentimes words pop in. Sometimes it’s a whole sentence.” A native New Yorker who grew up ...