It seems everyone you know has used the pandemic to change something in their lives. Some baked sourdough, others changed careers. Erick the Architect has released an EP, “Future Proof”, but he has also taken up a hobby that has fallen into disuse: drawing. Before moving to Los Angeles to become a full-time musician and before starting Flatbush Zombies, Erick was studying drawing in school. “Music is the thing that most people know me for,” he said in a phone call, “I never put my art or my design first. So I took advantage of that. to collaborate, to combine that with singing, and it became something I did almost every day because there was no outside.
Although “Future Proof” is far more introspective than much of his work with the Flatbush Zombies, he credits his time with that group for helping him find his own narrative. “I think it was an extension of something that came out of working with two of my closest friends around the world,” he said. “You sacrifice an individual story to tell a universal one. I always put out little bits and pieces of music that were my own narrative, but it got lost in what I had been doing for so long.
The EP takes its name from a line in a song about how when the music you make comes from your soul, you’re “timeless”. But creatively, using the pieces of his life as raw material for music presented a conundrum: “Take a concept that may have taken hours and hours or days or years, how can you put that into those two years and a half little song? Going from working primarily with samples to writing original music on pianos and guitars provided a set of tools to ease the process. It also testifies to his vision for the future: “I have always considered myself to be multifaceted, and it was not enough for me to know and find drug samples. I wanted to be able to sample. I want people to listen to my stuff one day and email me, asking me to approve the use of a sample.
He’s compiled a partial list of artists he considers major influences (Herbie Hancock, Quincy Jones and Miles Davis), and while none of them are closely associated with hip-hop, there is a common thread in the sense that they have all revolutionized their respective genres. “Sometimes music isn’t about how much you want it, it’s about making the right decisions and always doing what you want,” he said. “It’s your own individual understanding of what it means to be successful.”
When I asked him if he felt compelled to lean into some of the common hip-hop tropes, like chasing after women or bragging about luxury goods, he was quick to say no firm, before tell of sitting in a writing camp with other big names in the genre. “There was so much of the same shit, how can my shit be good? How can you think mine is good when people like the same thing over and over again? He asked. “It made me feel, for a split second, Like do I… no. I’m not gonna do this, man. Because the albums that inspired me are eclectic as hell, man. That shit didn’t fit. And we’re still here talking about it.
There’s an underlying faith in how he stays true to himself. “I have cases and thoughts of giving up or changing, but you have to remember that who you are is probably why you keep hanging around,” he said. “Once you change that, you could eliminate yourself from the music industry.”
He venerates artists who have come out of their original genre. “There might just be a judgment someone makes about a whole genre, which is silly, but people say I don’t like that kind of music. So once you take him out of the genre he is and put him somewhere else, it gives that opportunity for someone to give him a second chance,” he said. “That’s what I thrive on.”
With that in mind, deliberate and nuanced changes in composition popped up a few times in our conversation. Erick loves drawing inspiration from movies, especially how time can be warped to create effect. “In a slasher movie, they would come in and hit you with a machete,” he said. But a director he admires, like Quentin Tarantino, would treat the scene differently. “He was raising his hand, before she came down with the machete, they were showing pictures of everyone’s face. This move that would have taken two seconds is now extended to three minutes.
From there, you can draw a line between admiring the film’s intricacies and Erick talking about how he uses music theory when composing: “There’s something special about dictating the genre of a song once the melody is established,” he explains. “Even if you don’t know the music, when I play a certain chord, you know that song is about happiness or triumph and that other song is about sadness. I think the genre a song lives in is determined by the drums. In fact, they make the song.
Sifting through the details and figuring out how to seize them to build his own path brought Erick to where he is today. He knows who he is and stays true to himself. And this is also true for his activities outside of music.
Before our call ends, he mentions another pandemic lockdown hobby he’s taken up: browsing the internet to buy the things he missed when he was younger. “All the things I wanted to have as a kid that I could never afford, whether it was toys or video games, I tried to go back and tap into my imagination when I started to fall in love with these things,” says Erick. . Because sometimes going your own way means looking back and stopping for a bit to play before moving forward again.
