Almost as soon as we begin our interview at Brooklyn streetwear shop Boundless NY, Jay Electronica decides that the only way to properly tell his story is to hop a Greyhound to New Orleans. “Let’s eat, meet my mom. Let her tell you what happened to her in the hurricane…”

While this plan ultimately goes unrealized due to his impending trip to Israel with Erykah Badu and the time constraints of magazine publishing, Jay is dead serious, and he follows up several days later with a phone call to see if it’s still possible. Interviews are too forced, he argues, which is why he has, up until now, avoided doing them.

“If I never talk to you again and then I see you in the street or at a party and say, ‘What up, that’s the guy who did such and such,’ …