To: Adam
Love: Dave
Date Sent: 8/25/2019
Will Sessions – The Elmatic Instrumentals
Release Date: September 27th, 2011
My goal was to do a deep dive into the lyrics for Welcome to the Black Parade and send that album with what it means to me. However, after reading through some of the lyrics to the first two songs, I realized that would take me about a week to figure everything out. So stay tuned for that one! LOL. So I thought, “Hmmm, what have I been really listening to a lot that would be a nice substitute?” I landed on Will Sessions – The Elmatic Instrumentals. Instrumental = simple. Right? WRONG. WRONG.
I started to look into who Will Sessions is/are and why some of the songs sound eerily similar to Nas’ songs from The Illmatic. NOW it seems like it should have been pretty fucking easy to understand why. OK, bear with me. Nas released Illmatic in 1994, his debut album. Nas is from New York and that makes sense with the second track on the album, NY State of Mind. So, I then read that Detroit rapper Elzhi wanted to do a tribute album to Illmatic. I then believed that the Will Sessions album was the product of this vision, recreating the beats from scratch. WRONG. WRONG. Elzhi worked with Will Sessions, a Detroit-based band that makes a lot of mixtape albums/instrumentals that are fucking awesome by the way. Elzhi asked them to remake the music from Illmatic with their own zest, their own flare. Only then did he go and make his own raps over the beats from Will Sessions and created his own album called Elmatic. What a whirlwind. I feel better just getting it out.
I am listening to Elzhi’s Elmatic now (also released in 2011) and it is legit, especially with his “uniquely-titled” track Detroit State of Mind. I had listened to Illmatic when I was working out earlier this week (prior to finding all of this shit out) and loved the album, but not fully. I will have to re-listen to Illmatic now that I have digested all of this information and see if I find new love, new meaning. Nas is great, but this entire tribute makes his work stand out even more to me now.
A lot to take in here and I am technically forcing you to listen to 3 different albums, but the instrumentals album is amazing as a stand alone. My favorite song is the third track entitled Life’s A Bitch. I have listened to it on repeat multiple times this year and now again tonight. This is an album that you could play for others and see if they pick up on it!
The Favorites:
Adam:
Dave: Life’s A Bitch