i wrote my 1st song when i was 10 years old, after the death of my grandma. her necklace is my logo. i have been wearing it since i was 12 years old.
i started making music when i was 15, with my cousin Eddie. we set up a microphone from the PlayStation 2 game "Get On Tha Mic" on his dresser, and hung blankets up from the ceiling to soundproof inside of my great-grandma's house. recorded everything on Sony Acid (RIP) and i did my best to mix with literally 0 experience.
our original group name was "Rhythmic Intelligence Over Taking" or "RIOT" for short. he was the main face of the group, i always liked focusing on the production & behind-the-scenes stuff. this is where the name of my brand originates. i have been "E-LOW" since i was 12 years old. it's just a hyphenated version of my real name.
eventually, i started focusing more on solo projects. i moved from Knotts Island, NC to Orlando, FL after high school & went to a trade school for audio engineering called F.I.R.S.T. (Florida Institute of Recording Sound & Technology). i loved that school. i was in an 8 month program with only 7 other people, and had almost open-range to discover the inner workings of how actual studios work. i didn't know shit. im so glad i went there instead of the "acclaimed" fancy school down the street that cost 5x that amount.
after graduating from F.I.R.S.T. when i was 19, i started coming up with ideas for projects, and started crafting what would eventually become my 1st fully self-produced project, "MC2: The Prelude". I would listen to my mixes & beats at work, doing deliveries for various companies in central Florida. car tests are very important.
i released my 1st mixtape on my 21st birthday on May 15th, 2015. The title of that project was "(r)ED". it's now unreleased because i didn't produce most of it. i got beats off of YouTube and made my own songs over those. but that was the first time i showed my close friends & family my music. it was scary to start, but this is something i always did. and anyone close to me knew that music was one of my biggest passions in this life. it just made sense.
Halloween 2015 i released "MC2: The Prelude". my true 1st introduction into what would become my obsession for the next 5 years. i produced that. i mixed that. i recorded that. i was so proud that i made.... something. entirely from scratch. the album cover comes from a photo that i took of myself in 2013, standing in Eddie's yard, wearing a clown mask that i found in his house. i am still so proud of this project.
after moving back to the Outer Banks in North Carolina in 2016 i started working on "E". my original plan with releasing music was to put something out every year on Halloween since it's my favorite holiday. "E" was kind of rushed and not executed in the way i originally planned it. still, i made the deadline that i set for myself. this is a special project because i finally got Eddie back on a song after a few years. the album cover is an areal view of the house that i was raised in for 12 years on Knotts Island. the little yellow house on the hill.
"The rEDprint" was my 3rd major project and it features a few of my personal favorite songs that i have made. "K.I.N.C. (The Anthem)" is one of the greatest pieces of music that i ever created. i will always love how i managed to make a piece of art that truly makes me feel at home when i hear it. "Like WOAH" was also a favorite, and i remember working at Mako's in the Outer Banks at the time and my co-worker, Cam, really loving that one. he would always quote it to me. the other favorite that stands out is "Get LIVE (The Sound)". me and Dirty Red (aka Moose) created that beat one night after class at F.I.R.S.T. i will never forget that night. sitting in the studio playing around with synths, going out to smoke some weed, adding the drums, and losing our minds at how we just made that. it was such a special moment in my life. long live Moose.
from 2018 - 2020 i was putting a ton of music together to go on what would eventually become "FIV5FIFT55N". breaking from my original schedule of putting out a new album every Halloween, i decided to release this project to the public on May 15th, 2020. my 26th birthday. my mom's 44th birthday. i chose that date to drop my biggest project up to that point because it has always been special to me. my mom had me on her 18th birthday & it was always such a beautiful thing to me. she sacrificed so much to get me here and i wanted that to be a dedication to her on her day.
"FIV5FIFT55N" was 15 songs that shaped who i am currently more than probably any other project that i've done. i leaned into the more political aspect. i started using old samples from propaganda videos. my general demeanor towards the state of the world was almost at current day levels, but still, i had a lot of hope left in my little heart. this album features the first song i ever collaborated with Sav on. that is something we always wanted to do together. im glad it turned out to be so hauntingly beautiful.
i bared my soul on "FIV5FIFT55N" with tracks like "Trust Issues" and "EGO". i really wanted to make something that reflected a lot of different parts of my soul. some of those words have come back to haunt me, some have only gotten truer with time. this was the first project that i finalized in Colorado. i released it barely a month after the world shut down for COVID. and right after that, the protests against the raging police brutality in America began. i decided that maybe now wasn't the time to center myself. i stepped away... for 5 years.
and then......
they started using a.i.
in 2025, i decided i had had enough of sitting on the sidelines to watch people kill the planet in order to generate slop that they passed off as their own "art". people with no creative bones in their bodies. people only out to make a buck. who use programs that scrape the internet for original, genuine music & visuals to give you something that looks passably mediocre. sometimes.
i created "ALGORHYTHMIC INTELLIGENCE" out of spite. this album was a mission statement after a couple of years hiatus.