It’s a position that could lead to feelings of isolation, maybe even depression. On the aforementioned “The Boys Who Died in Their Sleep,” rapping under his alter ego, Captain Murphy, Ellison laments: I can’t even look in the mirror/ Baby would you get my pills?/ I need a Xannie and a Vicodin, Percocet or Valium/ Anything to take the edge away/ I travel through the light in the ceiling and everything just goes away/ I know of a place inside my mind where I am free/ Take another pill, take another pill. It’s nominally an ode to the deceased Peralta, but is there an autobiographical aspect as well? Ellison explains it one way: “Oxycotin, Vicodin, Xanax—that’s the new heroin. I’ve seen what it does. It’s not death that I fear, it’s being comfortable in a cloud where nothing ever happens.” It’s that fear of passivity—drug-induced or otherwise—that finds expression in Ellison’s music, always searching for new sounds, always fighting against complacency and comfort, never resting or resolving itself. In some respects, Ellison’s relationship to chemical substances might be seen as a part of that endless search for stimulation, but it’s hard not to see it also as a form of self-medication, a means of tamping down the more mundane and lonesome aspects of his life.

In fact, if there’s anything worrisome about the trajectory of Ellison’s career, it’s the possible consequences of the lifestyle that surrounds musicians of his stripe. Over a ramen dinner that night, talk turns to the accidental death of widely beloved footwork pioneer DJ Rashad as the result of a drug overdose last spring. “Rashad was still trying to figure out his thing,” he says. “He was right about to make the statement, but he didn’t get there.” Amid the din of the restaurant, Ellison then tells me matter of factly that he had a near-death experience in New York this past June, right after he had handed in his album. “I was in my hotel room, and I had done my fair share of ups and downs that night and um...” he pauses as he floats back to that troubling scene. “I woke up in the middle of the night and stumbled to the minibar to try and find some water, and I just collapsed. I couldn’t move; I was paralyzed. I could feel my heart stop. All feeling stopped. I stopped hearing. My sight started to get white, and things in the room just started to go away. And then I got cold. I was just like, ‘Okay, I’m dying. This is totally what they talk about when you’re dying.’ And I started thinking about my friend Austin who passed away. I thought of all the people that have passed away in similar instances, like drug-taking: ‘Ahhh, this is how it happens. It’s just a slip up.’ And then I was thinking, ‘Wow, I’m going to fucking die in this fucking shitty hotel room!’”

Unable to move or call for help, he said that he lay on the floor and tried to be conscious of his breath until the moment passed. Today, at the restaurant, he shakes his head at the memory. And though he doesn’t ever say it aloud, maybe there was a lesson he learned on that hotel floor. While on the album he is seeking an understanding of what follows after death, I get the sense that there was also a moment of clarity for Ellison here in his own life. Gratitude, perhaps, knowing that it was not time for him to be called home just yet.