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In the following interview Zane speaks with eLZhi about his new album The Preface.

What’s up Elzhi? Man it’s an honor to get to talk to you. I really appreciate it.

I appreciate it man… same here… so what’s poppin? What’s good?

I want to talk to you about this new album man… What’s the story behind the album title? Is The Preface the introduction to the eLZhi solo career?

That’s exactly what it is. I’m coming out with a solo album and it wasn’t a better name fit for this album. It’s just the beginning of my story. You know it’s like the beginning of my book of life. You know how people are able to go through different chapters, and it’s like different pages on what I’m about. You know what I’m saying… a lot of people know me from Slum Village and some guest appearances from Little Brother, the Welcome to Detroit album, but they never really got a full album from me. So this is just an introduction to people who might not have known me, and for people who were already up on me but didn’t know that I could do certain things that I was trying to come across on the album.

I know people are asking you about this a lot but songs like “Guessing Game” (my personal favorite) and “D.E.M.O.N.S.” feature some great wordplay and unique lyricism. Can you tell us a little about your writing process? How do you take the songs from ideas to complete records, lyrically?

I’mma take you through the whole stage… I listen to a track and, to me, it’s like the track is saying something. It might be saying a girl song, maybe saying a club song or maybe some street shit. I take it there you know what I’m saying? Lyrically.

Now the process of me writing songs varies because once I have that idea I might end up going to the studio just fresh off that idea and writing something at the studio at that time, or maybe writing to it at the crib and then going to the studio and laying it. Basically once I get that idea in my head of what I want to write about then it just comes to life. That’s the tunnel vision that I have. I see that all the way down at the end of the tunnel and that’s what I’m trying to get to. Everything just falls into place after that.

So do you start writing out lyrics before you even listen to the beats or are you starting with the beats and working lyrically?

For “Guessing Game” it was just an idea that popped in my head off a line that I had in this one song called “Fire” which I put on an album… it wasn’t really an album… it was more like a mixtape – Europass. I said something where I broke up the word technology and from that one word wrote out the Guessing Game. And basically I heard a beat that Black had and I felt like this concept would go with this beat. Now I wrote the chorus and everything to the beat. I actually wrote the rhymes to the beat too but I had a couple of lines that I was kinda playing with before I even heard the track.

And as far as a track like “D.E.M.O.N.S.”… now this is real crazy. I didn’t know this man but after I cut the record and after Black came into the studio and heard “D.E.M.O.N.S.” he told me that same record that he sampled for “D.E.M.O.N.S.” had a demon on the cover of the record. So I thought that was crazy. When I hear music I go off of what the music is telling me to write.

On the production side, you worked with Black Milk, you worked with DJ Dez. You worked with both of them with Slum Village, right? So did that make it an easy decision to work with them on your solo album?

What I really wanted to do with my first solo was incorporate all of my family – people I consider to be family who make music. I got a lot of family members thats into music. Black was definitely a person I was looking forward to doing some beats. I was also looking forward to a couple other people, but we only had a short amount of time to get this record prepared. The record took like three to three and a half weeks to finish… so it was like “let me get this beat, let me get this beat here.” So certain cats weren’t really moving fast enough or they didn’t have what I was looking for at the moment so they didn’t really make the cut. But Black had a lot of stuff that I saw myself rapping on, and that’s how it really turned out. It was definitely easy because I know his vibe.

Did that time constraint of trying to hustle to get to get the writing and recording done in three weeks… did that really push your creativity?

It pushed me and sometimes it frustrated me… like certain story songs, I wasn’t sure how the story was going to end. And certain beats that I had to change because of the fact that Black had already sold the beats or whatever. So in that aspect it was kind of frustrating. But on the other hand it was pushing me because I was coming up with songs like “Guessing Game” and even “COLORS” so I guess it did push me and frustrate me at the same time.

You must be pretty ecstatic to have this record out then. Are you heading out on the road now?

We settin up dates now. One of my first dates for me to perform out of Detroit is at Red Bull out in Seattle… it’s like a beat competition. We also got a tour in the works. My manager’s trying to set up a tour with me, Black, and Guilty to peform. So they’re trying to do a U.S. tour and a Europe tour.

How can people find out about tour dates?

I’ll post it on MySpace.

So what’s up for eLZhi, the solo artist, in the future?

So much man. I’m trying to have another project out at the end of this year. People’s attention span is just so short that you kinda gotta keep hitting people in the head with material, and that’s the main thing. I want people to know that I’m capable of giving quality material. So I’mma keep doing music as far as the solo end. You know I still got the Slum thing that I’m doing, as well as me and Fat Cat. We working on stuff. We got a group together called Cold Steel so we trying to get that popping. And I’m willing to take it all on because in this day and time these are the things you have to do to stay relevant so that people don’t forget, and people understand that you’re able to come out with classic music. So people don’t even think twice; they just wanna pick up your record

Alright I know you’re busy but I want to ask you one more question. You mentioned that you still got Slum work going on so there’s another Slum Village album coming?

Yeah it’s coming. It should be in the near future, man, like sometime in the beginning of next year. Really we just trying to make sure our business is straight. And then once that’s good we’ll go back and do another record. But as far as The Preface, and the Night Gallery which T3 is bringing out later this year… it’s also to show people who enjoy the Slum vibe that we got even more than just the Slum vibe, and we reppin the Slum in a time when we trying to make sure that we get everything together behind the scenes.

Get eLZhi’s The Preface at Fat Beats.