Elzhi Drops “Alienated” With Smitty Soul

It has been a long wait for Elzhi fans. The talented rhymer launched a Kickstarter for a new album back in November 2013 and it seemed like nothing would come of it. But what fans didn't know was the Detroit rapper was dealing with depression, which halted his entire process.

Now that Elzhi is in a better place, things have changed. The former Slum Village member's long awaited album Lead Poison is scheduled to drop later this month and he's been offering up singles off the project. The latest release is "Alienated" featuring singer Smitty Soul. The song offers up a glimpse of the new direction that Elzhi's personal turmoil has inspired.

Elzhi spoke to Vibe about how the creation of Lead Poison was unlike anything in his career.

"What’s funny is if you follow my career, it’s like it doesn’t really take me that long to do a record," Elzhi said. "In this particular case, I was working on myself while I was working on the record because I was going through so much because the way that I looked at life was like… my perception was all about the deception pretty much and at one point in time, I never was able to look at the bright side of what was going on."

The Elmatic rapper explained that once things began to click, the process became smoother.

"Once I really got together what I wanted to say, then I had to go through that process of like, okay, I gotta make the subject matter a little lighter, I gotta be a little playful with this, it’s a certain way I gotta come with it," Elzhi said. "I wanted my album to sound more whimsical, cause I was in the mind state of Tim Burton, Quentin Tarantino, that kind of vibe. I wanted the record to sound real whimsical, but at the same time, tell my story, so it took a minute to actually get that fusion going and put it through that funnel to make it sound the way I wanted. But once I got it there, once I heard how it sounded for the first couple of tracks it was like 'okay, now I know what to do with the rest of them.' But I would say it took me like a year to just fix everything completely."

Elzhi's Lead Poison drops on March 25.

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