Artist Profile: Elijah Bank$y

Written By G.C. Bellchamber
Elijah Banks stands in front of a large hedge

Elijah Bank$y, the LA-based rapper originally from New York, has spent years defining his personal taste, in turn actualizing his sapience in dramatic form through his artistic output and boundary-pushing style

Bank$y originally fell in love with hip-hop through the influence of his father, who exposed him to a bevy of East Coast rappers. While Big Pun was Bank$y’s personal favorite, his family still tells stories of him reciting Wu-Tang songs verbatim as early as three years old.

At the time, many of his musical influences were remarkably underground; the first mainstream rapper he heard was 50 Cent, when his brother made him a CD featuring the artist’s music.

Therefore, his first forays into rap were, first and foremost, emulations of the boom bap style that encapsulated the sound of that region and era. As he matured, both personally and musically, he credits artists such as Mac Miller with having opened his mind to the melodic capabilities of rap, and, as he saw artists pursuing subject matter that more closely fit his experiences, he felt more and more drawn to the art form as a whole.

“Once I [began to understand my own subject matter] is when I really kind of started carving out who I wanted to be as an artist, because everyone's stuck on an image. Don't get me wrong, it's good to have an image. I think I have an image as well, but I think the as far as the content that I was dragged to, I didn't really care about what people were wearing per se. I was mostly caring about listening. If I liked what they were saying… if these people had bars, I f*ck with that.”

From this point, his first three tapes formed: Coldest Day in February Shines the Amethyst Rock, 50 40 90, and FROM ME 222 YOU.

It was through this stage of his artistic career that Bank$y was drifting away from the boom bap foundations of his childhood and experimenting with the trap and melodic sounds that would eventually come to define his style.

This culminated in FLEE TAPE, his fourth project, which, through an exploration of the New York concept of “getting flee”, or freshening up your style, allowed Bank$y to explore the concept of taste and personal authenticity on a grander scale. FLEE TAPE, when recognized in this manner, serves as a representation of Bank$y’s overall mindset. If he likes a brand or a certain sound or an activity, if it strikes his taste correctly, he will pursue it wholeheartedly.

“It was more authentic for sure…you can never run out of things to write if you just are constantly giving your perspective on what you see in the world, what you go through in the world, like family stuff, like girl stuff: those core values or core things that people will experience in their life.”

Since FLEE TAPE, Bank$y has released Horn of the Lamb, a collaborative project with underground mainstay ZekeUltra and Argov, and Good Work Sell Itself. Yet, since moving out Los Angeles, he has been in the studio, attempting to regain his artistic momentum.

He has a seven-track EP with UK-based producer Angus Luke in the vault and is working towards another four-track EP. Both will be released in the near future.

As Bank$y returns to the taste that he has carefully curated, centering heavily around the lo-fi and trap motifs of his current artistic era, his new output should be of interest to every fan of underground hip-hop, and his form of pure, authentic delivery will certainly imprint itself on each of his new projects.

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