8/17/16

"Yo, I met Parish Smith today, man."
LIRB Interviews Elucid

Earlier this summer, I had the pleasure of sitting down with rapper/producer Elucid in his East New York home for an extensive interview with Tiny Mix Tapes. Our conversation focused mainly on his 2016 solo album, my front-runner for AOTY, Save Yourself, but among its many brilliant lyrics we discussed, there were two lines I asked about specifically because of their relevance to Long Island. Read what he had to say and watch the videos for "Son Still Shine" x "Obama Incense" off Save Yourself and the title cut off Never 2ndary, the new mixtape by his crew Lessondary.


I wanted to ask a couple things just on some Long Island shit. "Babies wave guns out in Plainview?"

Ha! Yo, definitely, I wasn’t thinking Plainview, Long Island, BUT, yeah, that’s kind of interesting. I’ve never thought about that.

You weren’t thinking about that at all?

I wasn’t. I was thinking plain view like broad day. That is kind of ill. Nobody’s waving guns out in Plainview, I don’t think. Did Plainview take a turn for the worse?

Well, that’s what I thought was funny about it.

That’s hilarious. Ahhhh, that’s great. That’s funny as shit.

It’s one of my favorite lines!

On the way out the Bar Mitzvah, b-dddddd-dah.


And the other one is "Lest They Forget," where you meet Parish Smith in a fast food restaurant in the boondocks?

That was a fact. First job: Deer Park location of McDonald’s, Deer Park Avenue. I’m fucking behind the counter, sweeping up, and Parish Smith just walks in and orders a Big Mac Extra Value Meal super-sized, and he got like two apple pies. All I had the time to say was like, "Yo, what up? You’re dope."

How old were you?

Like 15, 16, I’d just gotten working papers, literally the first real job. I just gave him a dap and that was it, straight up. That area is wild, though. It’s got a lot of weird kind of stars.

There was a studio, I don’t know if it’s still there anymore.

Charlie Marotta was there in Deer Park. Charlie Marotta engineered all of the EPMD records, so yeah, that’s in Deer Park, but Lobo Studios in Dix Hills, the next town over. Guys like Nas were recoding at Lobo, DMX was recording at Lobo. I don’t know why guys were trooping in from the City to record in Dix Hills.

It’s always been like that. Hempstead had 510 Gant Studios where tons of people recorded.

Yeah, all of these guys are out there, so I would randomly see rappers of that time.

I think it’s just because engineers, by and large, are just regular dudes who are audio professionals. They live out on the Island and open up studios. It’s always been that way. If you look at the credits on psych rock records from the ‘60s and ‘70s, you’ll see weird studio names in random villages on Long Island.

Yeah, yeah, I thought that was really dope. I mean, I don’t know what the fuck [Parish Smith] was doing out there. He was out there in the McDonald’s eating bad food, and I was like, "Yo, I met Parish Smith today, man."

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