After some time after, hanging out with Elzhi, Baatin invited him to be featured on a few tracks on the album they were working on, Trinity. They’re third studio album and now, with three members. The chemistry was SO perfect that T3 and Baatin asked Elzhi to be a permanent member of SV. Dilla had no objections, all he saw was talent off of Elzhi.
Although in the group, Elzhi still had plans in pursuing his solo career. With all the work he was putting into being the new member of a group that had a huge following, he still found the time to jump in the studio and work on his solo album. Worked with artists and producers such as Black Milk, Guilty Simpson, Fatt Father, DJ Dez, Danny Brown, Royce da 5′9″, Fat Ray, Dwele and DJ Houseshoes.
Here’s a small part of an interview by LeisureLab.com, which explains a bit of how he writes and rhymes.
I know people are asking you about this a lot but songs like “Guessing Game” (my personal favorite) and “D.E.M.O.N.S.” feature some great wordplay and unique lyricism. Can you tell us a little about your writing process? How do you take the songs from ideas to complete records, lyrically?
I’mma take you through the whole stage… I listen to a track and, to me, it’s like the track is saying something. It might be saying a girl song, maybe saying a club song or maybe some street shit. I take it there you know what I’m saying? Lyrically.
Now the process of me writing songs varies because once I have that idea I might end up going to the studio just fresh off that idea and writing something at the studio at that time, or maybe writing to it at the crib and then going to the studio and laying it. Basically once I get that idea in my head of what I want to write about then it just comes to life. That’s the tunnel vision that I have. I see that all the way down at the end of the tunnel and that’s what I’m trying to get to. Everything just falls into place after that.
So do you start writing out lyrics before you even listen to the beats or are you starting with the beats and working lyrically?
For “Guessing Game” it was just an idea that popped in my head off a line that I had in this one song called “Fire” which I put on an album… it wasn’t really an album… it was more like a mixtape – Europass. I said something where I broke up the word technology and from that one word wrote out the Guessing Game. And basically I heard a beat that Black had and I felt like this concept would go with this beat. Now I wrote the chorus and everything to the beat. I actually wrote the rhymes to the beat too but I had a couple of lines that I was kinda playing with before I even heard the track.
And as far as a track like “D.E.M.O.N.S.”… now this is real crazy. I didn’t know this man but after I cut the record and after Black came into the studio and heard “D.E.M.O.N.S.” he told me that same record that he sampled for “D.E.M.O.N.S.” had a demon on the cover of the record. So I thought that was crazy. When I hear music I go off of what the music is telling me to write.
P.S. Rest In Power, Baatin and J Dilla. Slum Village and Black Milk are holding it down for you two.
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