Black Cracker (Ellison Glenn) was born in 1977 in Anniston, Alabama to a single mother. He works in an interdisciplinary manner and his artistic practice includes sound, text, video and installations. Stoic as fuck, with a baby face and a set of blue-collar shoulders, Glenn rocks a swag aesthetic that lies somewhere between Dipset and Blackbox. Currently living between Berlin and Lausanne, but based professionally out of NYC, he works as producer/MC/writer and has collaborated with the likes of Cocorosie, Creep, Bunny Rabbit and Grand Pianoramax, among others.
FACTS
1. Cocktails cure most ails.
2. I would do anything for you in the spirit of kindness and joy.
3. We can always do better, be better and seek our best.
QUESTIONS
1. What is the biggest inspiration for your music?
Holding hands, lifting spirits and shaking out ghosts.
2. How and when did you get into making music?
I have a passion for doing things in which I have little to no talent. I enjoy the humility of learning from the ground up and not from a place of ego or entitlement.
3. What are 5 of your favourite albums of all time?
Rain falling onto leaves in spring, the crunch of snow under tiny boot prints, drunken laughter, pressing my fingers against my ears on repeat or humming into a fan, and the silence of watching fish dig into the sand underwater.
4. What do you associate with Berlin?
Waiting for the light to cross the street.
5. What’s your favourite place in your town?
In the arms of my best friend and gorgeous darling.
6. If there was no music in the world, what would you do instead?
Hug as many people as I can.
7. What was the last record/music you bought?
Richard Wagner – Der Ring des Nibelungen.
8. Who would you most like to collaborate with?
My mother, brothers or step-father.
9. What was your best gig (as performer or spectator)?
Nina Simone at the Beacon theater, I honestly had never even heard of here.
10. How important is technology to your creative process?
Very much so. The technology of how to impulse muscle to curl and bone to tap.
11. Do you have siblings and how do they feel about your career/art?
I have never built up the courage to ask them.
Photo © self portrait
