Represent

About three years ago, four guys from Detroit were passing a blunt around a Berlin hotel room in ceremonial fashion.

Dez Andres (Humberto Hernandez), Phat Kat (Ronnie Cash), HouseShoes (Michael Buchanan) and Elzhi (Jason Powers) — Detroit hip-hop hierarchy — tour regularly abroad. As do Guilty Simpson, Black Milk and anyone else within one-degree of the late-great producer J Dilla in that camp. But the latter guys were not in the room that night.

The DJ and producer HouseShoes drew deep off the weed wrap. Seconds later, a cumulonimbus of smoke escaped from his mouth. He looked at Elzhi, handed him the smokestack, and said something to the effect of "Man, I just had a crazy thought. Check it: What if you redid Nas' Illmatic but called it Elmatic. Get it? Illmatic. Elmatic. Elzhi. That'd be dope."

Was this a kind of stoned brilliance? Or a fleeting idea that dissipated with the smoke that produced it?

The idea lingered in Elzhi's head: Illmatic, Nas' life-changing 1994 debut, was the record that compelled him to forge a path as rapper.

Like, if you will, a painter attempting a Van Gogh stroke for stroke but with a different color palette, when Elzhi got back to Detroit, he started to rewrite a record that The Source, Time, Rolling Stone and Spin all hailed as an instantaneous classic — and one that has stood the test of time.

Working on lyrics when he could, one-time Slum Village man Elzhi tapped Sam Beaubien, who leads the funk and jazz outfit Will Sessions, to rework the beats organically, with live instruments. He did not want to make a cover record.

See, covers are taboo in rap. While note-for-note renditions and creative reinterpretations of other artists' work is common practice in jazz, folk and rock 'n' roll, it's oddly looked down upon in hip hop. A rapper might get called out as a "biter" for "biting another rapper's shit" or, depending on the degree of misogynistic homophobia or eroticism, "riding another rapper's dick."

Elmatic, made in just six weeks, is not a cover record.

It's some sort of a meta-tribute. The beats and choruses are nostalgically familiar but sound fresh. Some of Elzhi's rhymes allude to Nas', and he plays with his distinct syncopation, but, lyrically, Elzhi's verses are original, personal and local.

... Out here with the dealers pumpin'/ the killers dumpin'/ dead bodies in Lake Michigan/ they shake fishermen/ pimps turn into pastors to fake bishops in the churches ...

Released on May 10, by the time this story hits the streets, Elmatic will be have downloaded, entirely for free, on more than 100,000 hard drives around the world.

Having just landed back in Detroit from yet another European excursion, and just hours from his first-ever live rehearsal with Will Sessions, Elzhi sat down to unwrap Elmatic:

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