Album Review: I Guess U Had to Be There by ELUCID & Sebb Bash
A Backwoodz-Lausanne connection born from an Alchemist cosign and sealed over sandwiches in the park. ELUCID has never sounded this direct, and Sebb Bash knew exactly how much room to leave him.
The Alchemist doesn’t hand out compliments the way most producers do. So when ELUCID was finishing Haram in L.A. and kept asking who made the beats Alchemist played between sessions, and Alchemist told him Sebb Bash was the best producer he knew, that registered. Sebb sent beats during the I Told Bessie period, and two of them stuck. They linked through mutual friends in New York but didn’t record a note that first meeting. They smoked in the park, ate sandwiches, talked. When they finally sat down to work on I Guess U Had to Be There, both understood from the first session they were building a full album, and the twelve cuts carry that deliberateness without ever sounding labored.
ELUCID has talked about this album pushing him in a more rap-oriented direction, and you hear it immediately. Where Armand Hammer tends to float in abstraction, I Guess U Had to Be There walks flat-footed through specific places. On “Make Me Wise,” he’s buying garden shears at Home Depot, noticing the refugees in the parking lot waiting for day labor, getting high before noon, telling a shopkeeper to watch his mouth. He’s cited Charles Burnett’s films during the sessions for their quality of finding a poetic language about the everyday, and that instinct runs through the whole record. On the same song, he calls himself America’s last drive-in cinema and the minister of culture, then drops one of the sharpest political observations here:
“Scarcity is a lie of the state
They pairin’ propaganda with pie in the face.”
That line falls between buying tacky gloves and pulling weeds, and he gives it no ceremony.
One of the album’s best songs, “Coonspeak,” takes the slur in its title and wears it out from the inside across both passages. ELUCID sees Donny Hathaway on a balcony with iridescent wings, refuses to entertain false flagging, admits no occupation is forever. The second half goes further. His gumbeat is unapologetic, burnt cork smeared on laptop computers, put in work, and still got credit when they called out sick. On “Fainting Goats,” a James Baldwin sample between Breeze Brewin and ELUCID spells it out plainly—not being permitted to articulate anything is the final devastation, and a silent labor force would be perfect. ELUCID picks up right there, calling out liberal hand-wringing that moves nothing, climbing the tree before they flatten all meaning. On “Alive Herbals,” seven words sit in the middle of everything:
“White people gotta get white people together.”
“Equiano,” named for Olaudah Equiano and featuring Shabaka Hutchings, swings from the chaos of a Hamsterdam reference and a vomitorium to saltfish and bake breaking fast, redefining Black power as health on the good foot, not force. On “Alive Herbals,” a hook keeps cutting through hangings and hurricanes and bleach for the sheets. Baby, I’ll be home soon. Tapped out, needs a week, but he’ll be home. “I Say Self” turns its title into a governing phrase. ELUCID asks what kind of slave he’d be, slaps his cigarette on the gatefold, claims a Sauce Money ‘98 flow. On “First Light,” he wears his collar when he’s poeting and when he’s not, and the two car seats on “I Say Self” sit next to a high-grade tree without anyone blinking. On “Fainting Goats,” after steel pipe niggas and open markets and bulletproof Jeeps, the final lines belong to his daughter:
“I show up every day, I make my woman smile
My daughter been sayin’ it be Happy Daddy’s Day for a month now.”
billy woods on “The Lorax” drops coyotes loping through canyons and rappers fighting their fans before telling his daughter all dogs bite and meaning it. His closer hits friendly and final at once—you can’t replace us with them, I’m telling you as a friend. Estee Nack matches ELUCID’s aggression on “Hands n Feet” with Billy Bathgate references, herringbone necklaces, and a crack about going over heads like an Israeli drone. Shabaka Hutchings plays flute on “Equiano,” and his presence fits a record where every collaborator seems to have walked in at the right moment.
As “Parental Advisory” ends the album hard, the questions in the hook aren’t rhetorical—why is at the end of a belt, did the strap wake you from your sleep, how’s it hurt you more than it hurts me. ELUCID only trusts someone if there’s blood drawn, confusing wrath for being loved on. He’d rather this belt than that one. Sometimes he’s tracing where the skin broke by himself, choking on his own snot with Welch’s Rolls. The premium on pain is too damn high like the rent been. A spoken word passage wraps the song with clinical language about how corporal punishment rewires a child’s brain, changes cognition, wears down the immune system, and none of it shows until after puberty. ELUCID gives you the belt, the snot, the Welch’s Rolls, and the neuroscience. Ka told him to do the work that moves you first, and this is that work.
Great (★★★★☆)
Favorite Track(s): “Coonspeak,” “Fainting Goats,” “Parental Advisory”