BLK ODYSSY
1-800-FANTASY
EARTHCHILD/EMPIRE
Well before Juwan Elcock rebranded himself as BLK ODYSSY after establishing himself as earnest Americana crooner Sam Houston, he was brought up on a diet of gospel music, ’70s funk, gangsta rap, and neo-soul. Having been exposed to a smorgasbord of sounds, it wasn’t until Kendrick Lamar dropped To Pimp a Butterfly in 2015 that Elcock shifted from singing deep-South folk-rock to taking bolder musical directions, bringing guitarist Alejandro Rios along for the ride. While pushing boundaries has always been an important facet of BLK ODYSSY’s work, they went a step further with 1-800-FANTASY by adding sprinkles of early 2000s pop-rock and landfill indie into their immersive melting pot of R&B, hip-hop, funk, and jazz.
Given Elcock’s penchant for concocting concept albums, it’s fitting that the follow-up to 2023’s Diamonds & Freaks centers around another conflicted protagonist’s desires for the opposite sex. But while last June’s effort was presented as a four-part erotic novella, 1-800-FANTASY depicts an impressionable teenager’s attempts to win over the woman on the other end of a phone sex hotline. From the moment her sultry voice asks our hero, “What’s your fantasy?,” we’re left to wonder whether his increasingly unsettling interactions with her actually take place as he spirals into obsessive oblivion over the course of the album’s 13 tracks.
Despite the woes of unrequited love putting our central character in a chokehold, 1-800-FANTASY is far from a depressing listen. Tracks such as the Wiz Khalifa–assisted “XXX,” “Phase,” and “Changes” are jaunty, sun-kissed bops that showcase ODYSSY’s mastery of merging sounds that couldn’t be any further from each other, while album closer “Last Resort” emerges from its grungy riffs to an uptempo R&B joint that juxtaposes seamlessly with our narrator losing any composure he had left (“I just climbed her roof / Why didn’t you tell me to stop?”). Think of someone like Steve Lacy joining forces with George Clinton and Songs About Jane era Maroon 5 and you get the gist.
In the run-up to 1-800-FANTASY’s release, Elcock admitted that he sees himself as more of a storyteller than a writer. While not as sonically groundbreaking as Diamonds & Freaks and BLK VINTAGE before it, ODYSSY’s latest is a showcase of equally vivid storytelling, filled with laments on how someone’s perception of love can distort their own reality.
