A few years ago, Elijah's work started constantly popping up in our ether. We became fans immediately solely from the reference points he was using. Having a similar upbringing, you can understand how his respect for New York and the overall art form we know as "Hip Hop" resonated with us. Fast forward to 2023 at our annual BBQ in Brooklyn, he pulls up with our good friend Sha.
Admittedly after a bit of glazing on our part, we got along with each other right away. Since then we've worked on multiple projects together, with the Summer '24 "Community Tee" being our latest collaboration. We sat down with Elijah in our Brooklyn studio to shine a spotlight on someone we're grateful to not only call a peer but also a great friend.
While born in Las Vegas, Elijah was raised by parents originally from the Bronx. Due to the “cultural vacuum” where he was born, he became heavily influenced by New York culture through mementos he found within his father’s belongings and his household where art was prominent. While attending an arts high school, Elijah broke into freelancing with one of his first commissions being for Chance the Rapper. During this time, his art teacher Ms. Mabel and her boyfriend helped Elijah find his path within the arts, and ultimately obtain a full ride scholarship to one of the most prestigious arts colleges, Parsons in NYC.
It was at Parsons that Elijah met many of his connections today, and later met a friend who introduced him to Show Me the Body. It was through his work with Corpus, Show Me the Body’s record label, that M.U.T.S Prints was born, a screen-printing shop that he owns with his partner, Crystal Garcia AKA Slimpoppins. Elijah continues to explore his multifaceted talents not only through illustration, but also videography, photography, and design to name a few. Through his work, Elijah continues to emphasize the value of working with friends and contributing to the cultural lineage that shaped him to this day.
When did you move out to New York?
2015, the same day I walked in my highschool Graduation. I went to Parsons which is where I met Matt Valdez (YahTuuSabe) and Clay (LateToMyFuneral). It's where I met a bunch of fools, but yeah I came out for college. I think I was like the second person to get a full ride in illustration or some psycho shit like that, but my arts high school really helped me through the whole process.
They cranked out fucking psychos in my class. I think four kids in my class got full tuition scholarships to the top art schools in the US. Shout out Miss Mabel, she literally creates psychos, it's so sick.
Was illustration something you always knew you wanted to explore?
My art teacher, Ms. Mabel, was dating the admissions counselor of SVA and he moved out to Vegas to be with her, but while they were dating he still worked there and was in my ear.
I thought I was a fine artist and he was like “you're an illustrator, bro,” and I was like, “what do you mean?” He's like, “You're very figurative. You like people and characters and you like doing album covers, you like making t-shirts, bro trust me, lean into this.” He saw me, and he saw my trajectory before I did.
I had done my first big commission for Chance the Rapper, the surf album cover, in high school. My sister Asha was working with Chance and she is the reason that I do art professionally. She was a photographer growing up and used to bring me to weddings and shit and I would be the Videographer. She would always be like, “Come on, let's get money off of this art shit.”
She brought me on to that and ended up working with Lizzo. She was tour managing her and doing her art direction and would always bring me on the jobs for that, and when we moved to New York she started to fall out of that relationship, so I started introducing her to the freaks and she got really into it. I got to bring something to her, and now she manages Show Me the Body.
I didn't really know what I could do with my art and it could be anything bro, it's literally whatever you want to do.
How did freelancing start?
Before college I did that Chance the Rapper shit and then I did the Booklet for a CD for this producer Oddisee. When I got into college my first year I met Show Me the Body and then we started making a lot of shit together.
My homie Abraham Rodriguez, I met him in college because we were in a drawing class and we were the only two kids from Queens. I was just smoking mad weed in front of school one day and the homie Abe came out and was like, “Yo you're the kid from Queens, right?” and then we started chopping it up. He hit the blunt, we go somewhere else to smoke more and he's like, “Yo, my homies are playing a show tonight if you want to come,” and then he brought me to a DIY show under the BQE and it was a Show Me the Body show. I met the boys there and then we started going to more shows and me and Julian started getting to know each other, meanwhile me and Abraham were like young and bugging out and getting into hella fights. He was just on some shit, and we both were, but he was on one and I hit up Julian and was like, “Yo just so you know your boy is kind of on one, but I'm holding your boy down. We're fighting, but check on your boy,” and Julian was like, “That's mad real, I appreciate you looking out for my boy.” Then he just started hitting me up like, “Yo, I'm in your neighborhood. You want to link up?”
It was fully through fighting and our mutual friend. They started fucking with me and then we started making shit and then the Corpus album started getting recorded while me and Julian were becoming good friends and then we got reached out to from this publisher that was a homie from Minnesota. He had a magazine called Green Room and he paid us to make a zine. That's how we started making shit as Corpus and we've just been like making shit together since that moment.
How did M.U.T.S. Prints get started?
So it kind of came out of corpus regarding the space. Corpus got a new space, a building in Blissville. They rented the building across the street and they were trying to rent to own this new one. They built the recording studio on the first floor and then we have the offices on the second floor and then some homies live on the top floor. There was one more apartment that now I live in but yeah, we kind of just needed someone to fill up the space in the basement. I was like I'll fucking screen print out of here for Show Me the Body mostly and then I'll try to start my print business.
Crystal was going to split it with me and we were just both going to screen print out of the same space, but I've known Crystal for almost as long as I've known Julian and shit. We just knew each other through homies but also printing because she would burn my screens and I'd help her print SMTB shit sometimes. We were just like why don't we just do this together if we're going to be doing it right next to each other. We know each other, we trust each other's work, so we were just like fuck it and we just committed to doing it together and It's been great.
It feels good since I’ve known her for a while, it just felt like an easy family thing.
What do you enjoy creating the most?
I think it's more about context, I just like making shit that I like.
I usually get the most pride out of working with my friends. Art is the language we speak, and it’s a love language, you know, this is how we communicate.
I'm going to film this shit tonight and I've been fucking nervous because it's all been hectic. I haven't been excited to do half of this shit, but I know it's going to be so worth it. We are the only ones who could do this, we depend on each other for these ideas and these feelings that we share and it feels good. That’s what makes this art so special and is why we're able to reach this level of art making.
It’s also contributing to the lineage of stuff that put me on, even the last flyer I did was for Madlib and Freddie Gibbs and that's sick. I was such a fucking high school nerd listening to Quasimoto on repeat, and I saw Freddie Gibbs and Madlib perform over 12 years maybe 13 years ago at Paid Dues, a hip-hop festival on the west coast, and the album wasn't even out. It was years before the album came out and we were like, “Yeah, Freddie Gibbs we've heard of him. We should go check it out,” and we pull up and fucking Madlib came out as his DJ and we're like, “What the fuck is this,” and then they started talking about the album a year later. I have intimate memories with this experience, but that was the first time I saw Madlib in real life that was the first time I saw Freddie Gibbs and now they're asking me to contribute to their world and It's awesome.
Where is the craziest place your art has brought you?
Fucking, some subway tunnels the other night, I mean that shit was literally the other night, it was fun.
Also I had to get in a helicopter and hang out of it and shoot a giant roller of the coffins that I did on a roof nearby, that was fucking scary. I mean it was double cool because I had to get in the helicopter and the scale was just so ridiculous, and I never thought I'd see it from that angle.
What do you consider to be your biggest accomplishment
I think my biggest accomplishment is surviving as a "drawler" for this long. The only jobs I've had is as a screen printer, shop manager at Greenpoint Tattoo Co. and as an illustrator for the past 10 years. I'm really proud of that, and I'm very proud of M.U.T.S. I never thought that I'd have a functioning business for real and the fact that I make a living off of that is crazy to me. I'm grateful for that. There's also a bunch of little things, like I'm the first kid to like go to college in my whole family, even though it was a scam, it feels good. I think mostly just being able to contribute to this shit I feel; I don't take it for granted, that I get to contribute to something so important to me. I think just that the fact that I get to live by my means, in the space that I wanted to is great. Everyone in my family broke their back for a living, and I work for a living for sure, but on my terms and that's exciting.
What advice would you give to your younger self?
Show up, like just be there. Be there and make shit regardless, and one thing that I try to tell people a lot, especially really talented artists that are insecure about trying to approach it as a living, is just if you know that you make better work than some of the shit you see, just put it out.
Like if people are already fucking with shit that you're not necessarily the most confident about, but you know it's good to whatever degree, just do it. Even if people are fucking with you when you barely fuck with yourself, by the time you're leaned into it and comfortable you know people are going to be on it.
What is your dream project?
I think that I'm blessed. I'm lucky enough to work within a space that I care about. I've done flyers for Wu-Tang and Chief Keef and I've touched so much shit that I think is important already, that I don't really know what my dream project would be. The more freedom that people give me usually, the more exciting it is to work on, but I really just want to keep contributing to hip-hop as a culture.
I draw mostly in context to hip-hop for a living, and that's a win. If I was nine and I saw myself I would think I'm the coolest motherfucker in the world. I just want to make a good living.
What is your ideal work environment?
Chaos is definitely a part of it. I think feeling scared is really important. I think that discomfort and being afraid changes your threshold.
If you do something that you don't want to do, or that you're scared of doing, and you accomplish it then it's not scary anymore. Then your threshold for what is scary and what is intense and what's overwhelming changes and I think that's a really exciting part of making stuff, is like taking it to the next level. I try to remind myself that being scared is usually a good cue that I'm pushing myself past my threshold.
I don't like getting in trouble anymore, but I remember being in school and learning about Egon Schiele getting arrested for making too grotesque of renderings of people and I was like, “Fuck that, if I ever am in a position where I have to get arrested for my art I'll do that.”
How has your art changed over time?
I mean even in the past like six years it changed quite a bit. I think I just leaned harder into the shit that I was already referencing. I always referenced graffiti and graff characters, and I always referenced old flyers and old t-shirts. Really just shit that reminded me of shit that I grew up seeing, like my dad's old graff t-shirts and graff magazines. He'd have flyers for shows that he saved from the Bronx and I would go through his black books and he'd have flyers folded up in there so I was always really interested in all of that. His boy Soyca, his best friend, was an artist and he did mad woodcuts and shit. His art was very informed by all of that and that's what I was interested in, but going to art school in high school I was classically trained. So I was making realistic paintings and I wasn't really drawing, so when I went to school for illustration, I didn't draw, I only painted. So I had no confidence behind drawing and all of that stuff kind of lives more in an illustrative space, and I wasn't thinking about it like that for a long time.
Would you ever want to do a gallery show?
I say fuck "capital A" ART like I don't give a fuck about that shit, like I have a tattoo of "gallery" crossed out on my leg. Even now I want to paint way more and I'm going to have to engage with galleries more than I ever wanted to probably, but I have to if I want to show my work. Unless I reinvent the wheel, which I've tried in college. I was writing mad essays about ways you can show work outside of a whitebox. But I just want to fucking paint. I don't want to write essays and figure out how to reinvent this shit right now in my life. If I want to make a living off of art and I want to paint more, then I'm probably going to have to sell some paintings to some galleries. I think it's just a matter of bringing my context into the space and making sure that this space isn't defining my work and the people who come to see my work help define my work. I want my scumbag Graff homies and my punk homies and my anarchist homies to pull up and look at my art. A lot of fine art feels like pandering because of the environment. At the end of the day, you're just trying to convince a bunch of the richest white people in the world that your work is culturally significant enough to be valuable to their standards.
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