Elucid’s music is grounded in observation and elevated by imagination. The New York rapper and producer’s awareness of the precarious world we live in and the body he inhabits charges his songs with the urgency of the times. If his last solo project, 2022’s I Told Bessie, was a brighter, more hopeful counterpoint to the dark soundscapes and stark imagery of some of his past work, REVELATOR is its clear-eyed, clenched-fisted, but no less hopeful successor. “I squeeze my children’s hand and walk hard against the wind” he rhymes on “Bad Pollen,” giving us a mental picture of a man who persists despite the circumstances because he has people to live by and their future to fight for.
The kind of indie hip-hop Elucid makes is known for (and sometimes maligned for) its wordiness, but Elucid’s songwriting here is distinguished by his economy of words—not their overabundance. When he says, “My favorite month September/I make gorgeous babies but I’m done makin’ N-words” on “Ikebana” you can hear the words and feel a Black father breaking a curse. Instead of blitzing with vocabulary, Elucid strives to say something emotionally resonant in the fewest words possible. The concise, frenetic songwriting on tracks like “World Is Dog” and the refrains-as-mantras throughout the album make REVELATOR as accessible as it is heady.
The lyrics are complemented by a soundscape of noise, ambient droning, glitches, and distortion courtesy of the artist himself along with producers Jon Nellen, August Fanon, Child Actor, The Lasso, DJ Haram, Samiyam, and Saint Abdullah. All of those seemingly disparate elements are held together by live instrumentation—namely drums played by key collaborator Nellen and dynamic live bass courtesy of Irreversible Entanglements virtuoso Luke Stewart. On “Slum of a Disregard” Stewart’s taut bassline propels the track and maintains its groove only as gasps give way to Elucid’s chopped-up voice uttering the words “My landlord ... is a ... Zionist.”
Elucid’s baritone is the signal amid the noise. On the album, his voice alternates between musical instrument, tool, and weapon. Sometimes he sounds like he’s reading from a scroll or stone tablet (“CCTV”), other times his tone is as intimate as late-night whispers between lovers in bed together (“SKP”).
The themes of resistance, struggle, family, and finding joy amid daily horrors are universal but the references are specific to his experience as a native New Yorker and world traveler. He’s been around the globe but his most poignant reflections on alienation are inspired by life within U.S. borders: “Too many flags/One too many flags/Seeing all those flags outside the city made nervous/Physical reminders I’ve been cursed to concrete,” he raps on “In the Shadow of If.” Any Black New Yorker who has lived in or driven through the “less diverse” parts of Long Island or upstate New York and seen how common it is for homes to fly the U.S. flags paired with “Blue Lives Matter,” “Trump 2024,” or Confederate battle flags can relate to these lyrics. But, if you’re of the same mind as Elucid, you can also relate to the defiance he expresses on the track “14.4”: “I’m in your sundown town holding my dick, dolo.”
Without being obvious about it or sanding down any of the rough edges that make his music interesting, Elucid’s done his big one, so to speak, with REVELATOR. It’s a “breakout album” from an underground artist designed for the drama and spectacle of live performance as it is deep listening. But, more importantly, it’s soul food for those who know a better world is possible if we’re willing to fight for it.
