eu-IV, Murriel Johnson, and the Story Behind the Beautiful 'Supernova' Cover Art
A producer, his great-uncle, and the powerful connection between beatmaking and visual art.
For Baltimore producer eu-IV, the art of beatmaking has always been a family affair. It started at a young age when his mother’s musical selections began to influence his tastes. “My mother always played all types of R&B and hip-hop around the house when I was a kid,” he told Marc Masters in a 2017 Bandcamp Daily interview. “All the songs she played then I love now.”
Then his older brother Travo Trackz blessed him with a cracked version of FL Studio 3 in 2005. Before long he was emulating his musical heroes like J Dilla, Kanye, and Flying Lotus.
From remaking the beats of producer icons to discovering his own style and workflow, eu-IV spent many years honing his skills and treating each beat as a fresh start. It’s an approach he continues to apply to his newer work. “Anytime I open up Ableton or Fruity Loops or whatever I just start with a white canvas,” he told me in a 2017 Micro-Chop interview. “I don’t have no beat in my head or nothin’. I just have a sample that I want to work with and I just go from there.”
Though eu-IV doesn’t have a roadmap when he first sits down to make individual beats, he enjoys the process of making cohesive albums that tell the listener a story without words. He leaned heavily on this style of music for inspiration when he set out to make his 2017 concept album Supernova during an especially dark time in his life. Plagued by car, financial, and relationship problems, he decided to channel his depression into something beautiful while building a narrative.
Drawing on the energy of albums like Shlohmo’s Badvibes and Flying Lotus’ Until The Quiet Comes, eu-IV used paper and pen to map out what ended up being the most emotionally draining and satisfying album of his career. He also told his great-uncle and visual artist Murriel Johnson about his vision for the cover art once he started working on the record.
Johnson’s involvement and subsequent cover art proved to be a key part of the music-making process. The cover evokes a dark, almost sinister beauty—from the striking Superman logo with rays of light exploding out of it to a colorless-eyed rendition of eu-IV. The producer’s facial expression seems to convey some of the unease he felt at the time, though a smile might be lingering just below the surface.
Seeing his great-uncle’s vision as he worked on Supernova compositions helped eu-IV push the project from half-done to complete. “I told my uncle the idea for the cover and he got it done midway through the process of completing it,” he told Micro-Chop. “That helped me a lot too because he knew exactly how I was feeling and where I was trying to go.”
The place eu-IV went was difficult but rewarding mentally and musically—there’s meaning in both the standalone songs and the record as a whole. The album kicks things off with “theunderstanding,” a direct musical homage to FlyLo.
From there, the symbolism gets more complicated and personal. “Intelligence” is an examination of humanity’s often arrogant view of its place in the universe and significance, “Supernova” is the anchor for the entire LP and made to sound like the final moments of a star before it explodes, while “Depression” is a musical response to when people ask the dreaded question, “Are you okay?”
Supernova is a listening experience that is dark yet therapeutic, which is just how eu-IV felt as he made the record. “To be honest, after the fact, and listening to it over and over up until the release, it feels like there’s kind of a suicidal undertone to it,” he told Micro-Chop. “It was good just to get that energy out, because I’m definitely in a better space now.”
Having worked through some of the dark thoughts and feelings on Supernova, eu-IV’s 2018 follow-up effort SHINELIKETHESUN began with a brighter outlook. “In the process of wrapping up my last project Supernova I made the title track ‘SHINELIKETHESUN,’” he wrote in a 2018 Medium post. “At the time the sun used to shine through my bedroom window. Didn’t have any curtains at the time but the sunlight was always welcomed.”
The experience seemed to shape the sound of the entire album. eu-IV tried to take a more optimistic tone, seeking to inspire others while simultaneously expressing himself. “I’m just trying to motivate people that were told they’re not enough,” he wrote in a 2018 tweet. “I know all about that, trust me.”
Despite the notable musical change in direction and a several decade age difference, eu-IV and his great-uncle continued to combine their creative skills in the wake of releasing SHINELIKETHESUN. In fact, it seems their Supernova achievements were just the beginning of a long and fruitful creative partnership.
Thanks for reading, see you on Monday!