VALLEY OF GRACE VS OSAGE by ELUCID

2xLP packaged in a gatefold jacket with two different colored 150g vinyls: Blue White Marble & Black White Marble 

When it’s all said and done, ELUCID is going to go down as one of the greatest rapper/producers of all time. We know this. We also know that when it comes time to examine his career, his evolutions, his groundbreaking work, his impact, it won’t just be about the big ticket albums and high profile collaborations. To really understand Gutta as an artist, you have to get in the weeds. You have to dig into the instrumental experiments like Bernadette and Horse Latitude, the dubbed out early tapes like Police & Thieves and Smash &  Grab. You need to peep the Concrete Sound System era, and the Dumhi/Tanya Morgan collabs. Without a doubt, For Madmen Only and The Kingdom have to get some serious run somewhere in there.

But if you ask us for two under-the-radar records that are essential to the ELUCID canon, we would go with 2016’s Osage and 2017’s Valley of Grace. Both projects are entirely produced by ELUCID (with the exception of “Housekeys” on Osage, produced by Ohbliv) and as such, are his earliest complete works as a beatmaker. The timing of these two is also crucial, as they bookend his Backwoodz debut album Save Yourself. They also mark the beginning of ELUCID’s ENY era, when life events upended a comfortable situation in Fort Greene and landed him in an empty East New York row house. Both Osage and Valley of Grace were produced without any label involvement, and as such they highlight an artist following his own instincts and inspirations, without regard to form. The two EPs are not similar; Valley of Grace was created during an extended time spent in South Africa, and Osage is a cathartic communique from the edge of New York City’s map. But together they capture a moment, both in linear time and in ELUCID’s artistic practice, that acknowledges all that came before and sets the stage for everything that follows.

But why don’t we let him tell it:

I’m truly grateful for the Backwoodz release of the Osage and Valley of Grace companion EPs. they were made during a particularly special point in my life, and listening back to these recordings, they have proven themselves to be as prescient and impactful then as they are now.

-  ELUCID

VALLEY OF GRACEOSAGE