Way Back: The Preface (2008)
While Elzhi was known in Detroit amongst DJ’s from open mic nights and his first project, the Out of Focus EP, he didn’t reach a national audience until he joined rap group, Slum Village. It was a position he was granted by the late J Dilla, whose solo career was blooming and felt it better that he left the group during his battle with lupus.
He released three albums with the group before branching out to drop the The Preface individually on Fat Beats Records in 2008. For his debut album, El went Michigan everything, with each production credit and feature going to fellow Detroiters. Black Milk produced all but two of the sixteen-track album, bringing consistently soulful sounds and samples.
He opens the album with brief conversation. He and a friend discuss radio fatigue and the need for something new. El then jumps in with a brief eight bars about his musical journey to this point:
“Now it's finally here and I'm in your possession
You witness my growth and saw the progression
A blessing, to the day that I'm breathless
I guess it was destined, now welcome to The Preface”
For “Guessing Game”, he ends each bar with a multi-syllabic word, leaving a long pause meant for the listener to fill in the blank. By the end of the first verse, you’ll find it’s already hard to keep up with his pen:
When you call yourself a “syllable sensei” you must back it up with dense lyrical content, and Elzhi does just that on “Colors”. Back by Ice-T’s 1988 hit of the same name, El makes a reference to at least one color in each bar:
“Got them boys in blue with black jacks locking the new youth
They sell purples through Blackberries with the bluetooth
Saw this gold digger red bone I knew posing in Black Tail
Another black girl lost inside the world of blackmail”
Elzhi addresses the ladies on both “Save Ya” and “Transitional Joint”, but he goes into his storytelling bag for “Talking In My Sleep”. Black Milk blessed the track with KRS-One and Big Daddy Kane samples. Here, El is struggling to determine if what he’s experiencing is a a lovely dream, a nightmare, or a wicked sleepwalk through his reality:
“Could it be a dream? I'm finally rich in wealth
I'm not convinced, let me pinch myself
Was my mother even sick in health?”
then:
“I'm shot, is this heaven, did I come in the gates?
Did I have this uncomfortable fate from somethin I ate?
Great, I got to use it or is it just in my head
If I unzip and pull it out, am I goin to piss in the bed”
The project was a phenomenal debut for who is often forgotten when people begin listing top MC’s. The title was fitting, because it truly was a preface for the high-quality solo material he would begin putting out from that point forward.
