Flatbush Zombies on Their Psychedelic Hip-Hop ‘Odyssey’

Around four years ago, members of the Brooklyn hip-hop trio Flatbush Zombies and their friends gathered around a TV, drank liquid LSD and tripped while watching A Clockwork Orange. “We all just felt this supernatural existence,” Antonio “Zombie Juice” Lewis told Rolling Stone before the first stop of their U.S. tour in March. “I left my body, man,” his bandmate Meechy Darko adds. “It fucked my mind.”

This blend of Kubrickian dystopia and drug-fueled mind expansion is at the heart of the group’s recently released debut LP, 3001: A Laced Odyssey. For Juice and Meechy (third member Erick “Arc” Elliott only smokes weed), psychedelic drugs like acid and shrooms have been more than escapist fun; they’re a portal into self-reflection that informs much of their lyrics.

“Sometimes I want to take a trip real deep in to my mind,” Meechy says. “I like to travel back into my consciousness and face my demons. They say, ‘Don’t look into a mirror when you trip.’ That’s my favorite thing to do.” The group may be the only rappers to sell blotter paper alongside T-shirts at their merch table.

Sonically, 3001, which reached Number One on Billboard’s Independent Albums chart upon its March release, can be as bleak and layered as its lyrics. “I was trying to create a dark orchestra feel for the whole album,” Elliott says. “I wanted people to be like, ‘Damn, this is like a movie trailer.’ I wanted [the album] to take a journey that transcends into the darkness to ascension and gets happy again.” Club music, this is not, as Elliott’s beats, whether orchestral (“Ascension”), cosmic (“Bounce”) or woozy (“This Is It”) remain hypnotic throughout the album.

“They say, ‘Don’t look into a mirror when you trip.’ That’s my favorite thing to do.” –Meechy Darko

It’s no coincidence that all three members grew up in Brooklyn with more esoteric musical influences than just hip-hop, with the group citing everyone from Joe Tex and Yellowman to Stan Getz, the Grateful Dead and John Mayer as early obsessions. “John Mayer can always get me out of a bad mood,” Juice says. “He is Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton to me.”

But backstage before their sold-out tour kickoff in New Haven, Connecticut, conversations about music often detour into the metaphysical and spiritual. Amid talk of blunts and bad shroom trips, members will bring up ego death, the yogic theory of kundalini, third eyes and “Spirit Science,” an esoteric animated YouTube series with titles like “Math of God,” “Mars Retrograde” and “Cosmic Connections.” Clockwork Indigo, the group’s 2014 EP with New York rap group the Underachievers, derives part of its name from indigo children, the New Age belief that certain kids possess supernatural abilities.

“The spiritual aspect came from me understanding consciousness and where I fit in this world,” Arc says, echoing the other members. “It helped me through being depressed. Once you know where you stand in the world, you actually feel like you’re important.”