Name: Juwan Elcock aka BLK ODYSSY

Nationality: American

Occupation: Producer, songwriter, vocalist
Current Release: BLK ODYSSY's new single “XXX,” featuring Wiz Kalifa, is out via Earthchild,
Recommendations: There’s an artist from Texas LARA The Siren that I’ve been enjoying. She’s working on a record that’s really tight.

If you enjoyed this BLK ODYSSY interview and would like to stay up to date with his music, visit his official homepage. He is also on Instagram, tiktok, and Facebook.



Where does the impulse to create something come from for you? What role do often-quoted sources of inspiration like dreams, other forms of art, personal relationships, politics etc play?

I think that my impulse for creating things comes from a bunch of different things. Stories around me that inspire me to expand on them and use my imagination. Dreams sometimes. It really just comes from life itself.

A friend of mine told me a long time ago that the way that I create music is so cinematic that I should always be a creating a score to my life if I feel like I have any sort of mental block for creativity. So that’s kind of what inspires me. I feel like I’m constantly just scoring my life.

For you to get started, do there need to be concrete ideas – or what some have called a 'visualisation' of the finished work? What does the balance between planning and chance look like for you?

No I don’t think so. I could start from a voice memo or I could hear a noise in the street and it could inspire me to start creating something so I don’t necessarily have to see the end product. Sometimes I do hear a finished idea in my head and then try to recreate what I think that would sound like if I built it block by block.

I think it’s good to plan when it comes to music but I also understand that sometimes over-planning can stress you out when you get in and realise that everything you have planned is going to shit. So I think there has to be some sort of expectation that it’s either not going to work or it’s going to work.

If it works typically the song will start to create itself while you’re doing it, and the song will tell you what it needs next to get it to that final level. If the song is not talking to you, I don’t force a conversation out of it ever, I just leave it alone and go to the next.

Do you require your tools to be laid out in a particular way, for example, do you need to do 'research' or create 'early versions'?

When it comes to recording vocals, yeah, absolutely.

When I make a beat that I’m really feeling, I always turn on my voice recorder and start to mumble whatever I feel right in that moment, because I always feel like whatever comes out when you initially hear it usually is where the magic is caught. I don’t like to lose that, so I always am putting on my voice recorder and recording what naturally comes out when I first am hearing the beat.

This way, when I get home and I want to write the lyrics, I can use that as reference for melodies, cadences, and syncopation, and just insert the words into that. That’s how I usually prepare for writing and recording.

Do you have certain rituals to get you into the right mindset for creating? What role do certain foods or stimulants like coffee, lighting, scents, exercise or reading poetry play?

I always like to burn incense and have the lighting very dim while I’m working; it’s always just been the vibe for me. I do find that when I’m in the mode where the creative part of things are done and I’m now getting the technical side of the records together, I work in a more light environment, something that feels a little more focused and 9-5ish.

When I’m trying to really create and get into a vibe, I usually like it dark with the incense going, and that frees up my mood a little bit and relaxes me so I’m able to just let the thoughts flow freely.

What do you start with? And, to quote a question by the great Bruce Duffie: When you come up with a musical idea, have you created the idea or have you discovered the idea?

I would say I discovered it because I’m a firm believer that all these ideas exist in the universe and they exist for anyone to take in. It’s about who puts the intentions out and the initiative to go and collect that idea. So I feel that every time I come up with something it was just in the air at that moment and I went to get it.

I pretty much always make the beat first. There were some cases on this record that was a bit different. On the track ‘Delilah’, I was in the shower and a vocal melody came into my head and I came into the studio and built it that way.

Very seldom this is the process but sometimes it does come that way - especially with this upcoming record which is a little bit more vocal-heavy and vocal-forward and a little bit less about the production.

Often, while writing, new ideas and alternative roads will open themselves up, pulling and pushing the creator in a different direction. Does this happen to you, too, and how do you deal with it? What do you do with these ideas?

Like I mentioned earlier, I kind of go where the song takes me rather than try and force it into a particular direction. So if I’m mid-song and I’m thinking, this melody is cool but it doesn’t sound cool over this beat, I’ll keep the voice note and I’ll move somewhere else with it, and I’ll try to find something that’s different over that beat.

You can get two songs out of what was intentionally supposed to be one, so I kind of let it take me wherever it takes me.


BLK ODYSSY Interview Image by Bethany R Reed

There are many descriptions of the creative state. How would you describe it for you personally? Is there an element of spirituality to what you do?

100% - whether it be religious or being in touch with myself and being in touch with the universe. I think there’s multiple levels to the spirituality of our music. I think being in touch with culture and being in touch with the heartbeat of people is a spiritual thing and I’m constantly trying to stay in tune.

Sometimes, as a musician, you can be in your own world and forget normal life shit, and I constantly try to stay in touch with that as it’s what makes us relatable. I think that’s a spiritual thing that I have to constantly work on. Also, I always reference God in my music and it’s a big thing in my life.

When you're in the studio to record a piece, how important is the actual performance and the moment of performing the song still in an age where so much can be “done and fixed in post?“

I found that in this upcoming record particularly it was really important because I was spending a lot of time getting into a certain character.

There were certain times where I was thinking vocally I could probably perform something cleaner, but in terms of the theatric of it and the emotion and expression, I’m willing to trade off maybe it not being the absolute perfect note for the fact that it was executed in a really passionate way.

Once a piece is finished, how important is it for you to let it lie and evaluate it later on? How much improvement and refinement do you personally allow until you're satisfied with a piece? What does this process look like in practise?

I don’t let songs sit for 6 months or anything like that. I have a really big think group around me and I’m the type of artist to leave the studio and send it to 20 people that I trust and say, ‘let me know what you think’.

I also have a very critical team around me and I think that if it’s not at the level that we want to produce music then it’s pretty evident when I send it into my management group chat. Either they say ‘yo this is crazy’ or they just won’t respond.

Even recording a solo song is usually a collaborative process. Tell me about the importance of trust between the participants, personal relationships between musicians and engineers and the freedom to perform and try things – rather than gear, technique or “chops” - for creating a great song.

I think it’s really important. Having people around me that you trust but also not yes men is really important because it allows you to grow internally before you go out into the world. You just get people’s opinions that don’t really care about your feelings.

It’s easier for my friend to say - I have this sort of community relationship with a lot of my friends in music where we walk into the studio, and one of my closest collaborators, we’ll be working on something that we’ll be passionate about for 4 hours, sit back at the end of the studio session, he’ll look at me and there’s a specific quote and he says ‘man that’s wet shit’ and we’ll just laugh.

It’s a good way to filter things out before the world tells you on Twitter: ‘man, that new BLK ODYSSY is awful.’


BLK ODYSSY Interview Image by Bethany R Reed

What's your take on the role and importance of production, including mixing and mastering for you personally? In terms of what they contribute to a song, what is the balance between the composition and the arrangement (performance)?  

As a producer and songwriter, I can only take the song so far because I spend so much time in it. So when it comes to mixing, the skill level of people that are working on the records has to be second to none.

We used Jason Joshua on this record, who’s one of the best of our time. They make a huge difference because sometimes we get attached to certain things that don’t necessarily translate to people hearing it for the first time. We want all of the different things that we produce and put into the record to be understood.

I personally mix very bass heavy, so when I’m working in the studio I crank the bass and turn up low-end and the subs, not knowing that it cancels out some of the things that I did that were really strong on a melodic end that are just cancelled out because the bass is taking up too much real estate in the song.

So it’s really important to have that second ear and that second layer of production in post-production on the records to really clean it up so that all the different elements of the record are understood and translated.

After finishing a piece or album and releasing something into the world, there can be a sense of emptiness. Can you relate to this – and how do you return to the state of creativity after experiencing it?

I can relate 100%. It’s almost like, when you raise a child and then they go off to college, it’s like ‘damn, what do I do now?’ I’ve been feeling that a lot lately actually.

Really, to me, it’s after tour where most of the emptiness hits. It’s like, okay now I’ve raised this child and now I’m putting it out into its first day of school and now it’s out in the world. Now, I’ve just finished the tour, now the project is off on its own, it’s got to continue to grow however it grows and I can’t really continue to raise it; raising being equivalent to the campaign. You definitely have to be patient with yourself in those sort of processes because it’s important you give yourself space and time to re-energise, and recharge yourself to put that energy into something again.

Usually parents after they have 3 kids, they put them all through college, they’re not like ‘let’s do it again’. But in music you’ve got to let yourself recharge before you go back out there and live life. Especially for myself as I spend a lot of time scoring things that are happening in my life, so I have to allow myself to live.

Creativity can reach many different corners of our lives. Do you personally feel as though writing a piece of music is inherently different from something like making a great cup of coffee? What do you express through music that you couldn't or wouldn't in more 'mundane' tasks?

Actually I don’t. In terms of creating things, especially when it comes to things that your body consumes, it’s actually quite similar.

When it comes to, say, a cup of coffee, if you put too much sugar or too much cream it really ruins the natural flavour of what it could be. But if you don’t put enough, it’s overbearing and you’re not able to really enjoy it because it’s too raw.

I think music is the same; it’s about balance of putting just the right amount of things to make it pleasing for people to consume.