Whether it’s Mobb Deep, Dead Prez, or OutKast, hip-hop loves a good duo. Hearing two rappers team up, push, and compliment each other on a full-length record is exciting. Just look at what PATHFINDERS are doing. The duo, made up of blackchai and Illohim, released a powerful, socially-relevant self-titled debut in late May, an album that boldly begins with the question: “Are there any great American poets in here?” Over the course of fourteen songs, they set out to answer the question with a loud and resounding ‘yes.’ The great American poets are here, ready to make their mark and we sat down with them on a Sunday morning to discuss the album, their dynamic, and how writing helps them stay sane.
This interview has been edited for clarity.
Thank you so much for doing this. I’ve been a fan of the album and of both of you. How are you feeling about Pathfinders so far? How’s the reception? Are you paying attention to it?
blackchai: It’s been really cool. A lot of people actually bought it on Bandcamp. The reception on streaming is pretty decent. I have shit that has more plays in it and everything, but this one is going faster, people have been tapped in. It’s been pretty cool.
Illohim: Yeah, it’s pretty tight. I mean, you know, for me, the album was a long time in the making, so just having it out, period, was such a joy for me. As well as a relief. I was sitting around with this pressure in my head like ‘Damn, we haven’t put this album out yet’ [laughs]. So I was just happy to have it out. And then, on top of that, to have people actually reaching out and being like ‘Yo, the album’s really dope’.
Illohim: My impetus behind it was to do something to support Tyler [blackchai] and his career, and it’s definitely done that. A lot of people have been giving him love for the album. I’m super happy about that. And, yeah, I’m just glad people like it. I pay attention, I’ll look at the numbers every so often to see how it’s moving. I don’t really sweat it too much, but it’s dope to see the numbers go up and people reach out to talk to us.
How was the process of making this album different and new for the two of you? How is Pathfinders different from a blackchai album or from an Illohim album?
blackchai: Naturally, the process of the collaboration is just a lot smoother. Just because, like, you’re only doing half the work. But also whatever you come up with, there’s also a whole nother thing that the other person brings to the table. Any kind of impostor syndrome or doubt you might feel when making your own stuff goes out the window when you’re doing something with another person. But it also ups the stakes like, ‘oh, he wrote this crazy verse’, now I have to do a crazy verse or some shit.
Illohim: That’s super valid. Everything Tyler said is pretty much how I felt, especially the lighter load. It’s crazy, it really made the process just feel ten times more enjoyable. I got a lot of Illohim projects I have made under extreme mental duress. [laughs] I’m just going through it and I have to create. And, with this project, it was just like ‘Nah, I want to make this’. I enjoy rapping with Tyler and I enjoy rapping about these things so I just wanna do this. Every time Tyler sends me back a verse I would get excited. I would be actually excited. Whereas it’s almost grueling to create an Illohim project. It’s just like, ‘I have to get through this’, even when I made Honey, I Love, my last solo release, especially the last parts of it, was very much like ‘Dude, I just want this out, I’m tired’ [laughs] With this, I could have been in the space of creating this album for another three or four years. And we technically are because hopefully we’re doing more.
Illohim: I did take on more of an executive-producer hat with this album. This is the first time I did it with somebody else. A lot of the beats I did bring them to the table or chose them and [blackchai] did a handful. And then the mixing and mastering, and a lot of the vocal snippets were things that I grabbed. Doing that, while taking into account Tyler’s style and approach to things was super important. Generally when I write I tend to be a lot more internally focused and I feel like on this album we shifted the focus externally and looked outwards.
Even with the executive production, how much space do you leave out for each other? Do you talk to each other about the lyrics, does the other comment on it?
blackchai: For the most part, one of us will do our part and then the other one will pick it up. We have talked about, like, Flawed Skin so overtly going in one direction. That one, I wrote my shit based on how the beat made me feel and then Nas [Illohim] came and it really matched the verse I wrote. Like that we didn’t really have anything to talk about. Most of the actual discussions were on the thematics more so just like generally talking about the album as a whole. On the individual songs we picked up on what the other person put down.
Illohim: I think there’s a lot of trust in what Tyler and I do. There’s a lot of mutual respect. Tyler’s one of the best rappers I know. I believe Tyler thinks I’m a good rapper [laughs] When it comes to that, we just kinda know without having to say anything to each other. You’re gonna come with it, you’re gonna give it the best you can. A lot of the tracks we did not have to discuss beforehand. It was just like ‘Alright, I like this beat I’m going to do something with this’ and then the other was like “Alright, bet”.
Illohim: It was really that simple, you know. And I love that. I love that I don’t have to worry and I don’t have to come back and be like ‘Hey, Tyler, I don’t really think that was your best work, go back and rewrite.’ I don’t ever have to do that, because Tyler has just such an internal calibration of quality. I just know he’ll do it anyway. There was never a time when Tyler sent me a verse and I was like “Eeeh, I don’t know if they could fit this.” It was always like ‘Great, this sounds good. moving along.’ In that sense we do leave each other a lot of sense and trust that whatever themes and concepts we bring up, we know that the other person is smart enough to pick up on that and riff on it. And from the side of production and beat selection, Tyler left me a lot of space on that. I asked him all the time what he thinks about the snippets I chose or the mixes and he always gives me feedback and, you know, that works for us. We’re gonna keep refining the process as we’re working together.
Tyler, you mentioned the song Flawed Skin, which I wanted to touch on. Both of you delivered incredible verses, it’s one of my favorites from the album, and it very well encapsulates the aggressive energy that’s present throughout. I wanted to ask if creating Pathfinders was an exhilarating process. Did it feel like getting stuff off your chest that you couldn’t have otherwise?
Illohim: Yeah, for me definitely. I don’t get very angry in life, period. I get annoyed, frustrated, but I don’t get angry. I can literally count on my hands the amount of times I’ve actually gotten seriously angry at anybody. So, you know, creating that and having people hear the anger and hear the various things that inspired that from the perspective of just being a Black man in America and tying it to so many different events in history was super exhilarating. Oh my god, I remember writing that verse and feeling like a mad-man. Some of the references there are subtle so that if you don’t know the bits and pieces of history that I know, you’re not gonna catch it. Like I remember I had to explain some things to Tyler when I wrote it. It’s stuff that I only learned that year that I put into that verse. It was like a pressure valve just getting released. I think it’s important, especially for Black men in America, to be okay with expressing anger about the situations we are in in healthy ways. And for me in particular, I don’t express anger enough so doing that was dope. I actually performed it acapella at a poetry slam and I remember this dude came up to me like ‘I appreciate how angry that was’ and I was like ‘Thanks’ [laughs]
blackchai: A little bit of the same. The process of making the record was over a year, so it was a lot of different points in time when different things happened. When we started I’ve been living in Philadelphia for two years and was kinda super isolated and like a month after we made the first song I moved back to New York where I’m at now. That whole year there were a lot of ups and downs and different moods, just throughout different points of where I was at. So similar energies were also directed into that and it informed each other. A lot of it was based on having a haven of being able to make these songs.
You said that the album was a year in the making. Listening to it, it feels very of the moment and topical. On the song both hands there’s the vocal sample “freedom is between the finger and the trigger”. In the context of what’s been happening, not just in America, the songs sound almost as if they’re made in response to that, even though they came out before. I imagine that writing the album also entailed having a lot of heavy things on your mental, so how did you manage to stay sane during the process of writing?
Illohim: Writing is the process of staying sane for me. That is the exercise, that is why I started writing, even before I was rapping, doing poetry. It was the exercise of keeping me sane, grounded and in tune with myself and my emotions, because I didn’t have any other outlet to do that. You know, thankfully nowadays I have other ways, but even then it’s still a critical part of my regimen, making sure my mental health is copacetic. It’s just writing about the things that I see, the things that I experience, the things that I feel. So, yeah, definitely writing in itself, as much as the themes and content are heavy, it is by design. By putting it on paper it doesn’t have to exist in my mind as much.
Illohim: Beyond that, I’m a very spiritual, religious person. I’m Muslim, I’ve been Muslim my whole life. And so that kind of grounding for me always keeps me sane. It allows me to contextualize a lot of different things that I see. The tradition that I come from is very much civically and politically engaged. We’re not the type of Muslims who are just like ‘oh yeah a bunch of stuff is going on in the world and God gon fix it, I’m chillin’ [laughs] Nah, we understand that our spirituality is tied to engaging in community and engaging meaningfully and engaging in a way that is revolutionary, because our prophet was revolutionary. That’s kind of how I stay sane and what keeps me grounded.
blackchai: My answer is mostly similar. Especially as writing has become more of a thing that I’m able to translate directly into as I get better, and throughout the process make albums, that was a big step up from making songs that were just the shit that I think sounds nice next to each other. I was able to hone in and actually translate more personally into writing which has become more of a therapeutic thing. Which I didn’t even intend to do initially. Definitely as it has become more of a skill, it has become more of a thing in my life that has hit me in that way, I suppose.
You are both very talented and skilled writers, so I want to ask, what do you find inspiring about each other? Not just in the music process but overall?
blackchai: This project is the first time I made this much music with one person. Just being fully on board with each other, because our styles are very similar yet kinda different, they complement each other very well. Out of everyone in our collective space, I feel like we do rap the most similar to each other. Just the constant upping the stakes and getting better, learning and actually collaborating instead of just dropping a verse. And through the process we became much better friends than we were before, too. I don’t even think we met in person until after we finished the whole project. Yeah we were finishing it up, I came to New York twice. We were like three quarters of the way through when we first met in person. And then the second time was like a year later when the album was done but it wasn’t out yet. I would say that after the process we are brothers and compatriots at this point, which is something I’m very grateful for.
Illohim: Man…I mean, look at you man, making me get all emotional. What you doing Tyler, it’s too early for this [laughs]. But for real though, everything Tyler said is pretty much the same sentiment as mine. When Tyler first joined NO CLUE., the collective we have, immediately I knew he raps a lot like me and we just share a lot of stylistic inspirations and everything. And just his general vibe, yeah I think we’re similar and do great things together. And, to have that be solidified and know that my intuition was correct is extremely rewarding. One of the big things I admire about Tyler is that, even outside the music, he’s very unapologetic and just expresses his thoughts and his perspective of the world. And one of the things that drew me to him was his perspective. I think that when I think about who I wanna collaborate with musically, perspective is one of the key components. His perspective is just so grand and he has a lot of knowledge about things that often impresses me. For us to have that overlap in perspective and create a new perspective together, and what we have with Pathfinders, it’s such a blessing.
