"We can’t go backward"

ERU is an artist born from the fires of seventies soul and the birth of pop in the eighties. His musical influence is his mother. ERU’s mother was a renowned female DJ in the world famous Inland Empire (Riverside, San Bernardino, Rialto, Fontana CA) in the seventies known as “Simply Merl”. To quote the humble ERU “Moms use to DJ these massive parties and I remember she’d let me sit under the table while she was doing her thing. That’s when I knew music would be a part of my life.” He recalls “I can even remember as far back as preschool when I was into listening to that “Off The Wall” album by Mr. Jackson.”

Strikingly peculiar of the character of aspiring artist Eru (Earl Henderson born 3/25/1978) did not consider himself to be an emcee until the late nineties when he heard people quit talking to the people in their rhymes about issues that mattered and started talking about how they were down to exploit people to get whatever. He ended our insightful conversation with a question that left a stain on my mind, he asked, “What ever happened to groups like Three Times Dope and X Clan the people who were using the art to lift the people?”

As we spoke on a more personal level ERU uncovered his perspective on hip hop artists by saying, “I always held emcees in the highest for the power they inherently possessed along with their explosive potential to wield more influence because of their ability to package life’s most vital situations into 3 minute conversations that are entertaining.” He continued saying with a child like glee, “People forget that in the mid to late eighties on to the very early nineties it wasn’t like everybody understood how to emcee. So when you did hear a freestyle or when you did see someone rhyming then they were either exceptionally good or they were very garbage on the rhyme.” Further more he spoke and concluded by saying, “Now everybody has a rhyme but that’s great because it shows how many people hip-hop has touched. So I guess you can say that my style of hip-hop would be that of a radical deconstructionist. Meaning I know we can’t go backward but we can make sure that what’s ahead of us is worth the time to listen to and ponder.”