Review: Josh Johnson - Elusive: A Mixtape

Back in the sum­mer of 2021, come­di­an Josh John­son sat down with Com­e­dy Wham to open up about his expe­ri­ences as a full-time come­di­an. He spoke about the hand­ful of open mics he attend­ed before mov­ing to Chica­go from his home­town of Alexan­dria, Louisiana and how he hit the ground run­ning when he arrived in the Windy City. Reflect­ing on the nat­ur­al tran­si­tion into a life ded­i­cat­ed to com­e­dy, he told Valerie Lopez, “​Weird­ly enough, the times I was doing com­e­dy were the only times I felt like I was being clear enough to be under­stood.” His clar­i­ty and pas­sion for the craft have led to an effort­less abil­i­ty to con­nect with crowds.

Dur­ing his inter­view with Com­e­dy Wham, John­son also let us know what he had been up to over the last year. On June 11, 2021, just days after the inter­view, John­son released his sec­ond full-length standup album, a mix­tape titled Elu­sive. While Johnson’s first album, I Like You stayed true to the style of a tra­di­tion­al standup com­e­dy album, the ris­ing star had some­thing a bit dif­fer­ent up his sleeve this time around. Want­i­ng to add anoth­er ele­ment to his craft, John­son includ­ed 8 orig­i­nal songs, for which he col­lab­o­rat­ed with a hand-picked selec­tion of musi­cians, in addi­tion to a long list of bits. 

Dri­ving the hybrid for­mat was the desire to tell sto­ries in a dif­fer­ent, more well-round­ed way. ​“The whole pur­pose of com­e­dy is to make peo­ple laugh so even when things go to a dark or con­tro­ver­sial place there is still sup­posed to be an uplift­ing end­ing. Music has all the tools, emo­tions, and time­less­ness of the human expe­ri­ence, and com­e­dy is how we process all of those things,” John­son tells Paste mag­a­zine. As a com­e­dy vet­er­an and music novice, John­son had to find the right artists to col­lab­o­rate with for the project. Fea­tured on the album are artists like Groove­box, The Psalms, and Wayne Tuck­er, and of the artists John­son says,​”it’s being done with – in my opin­ion – the best artists that are out right now.”

When you press the play but­ton on Elu­sive’s first track, apt­ly titled ​“Intro,” Johnson’s voice comes over your speak­ers in a soft tone to tell you, ​“This project is a bit dif­fer­ent than any­thing you’ve heard me do. Hope­ful­ly, it’s dif­fer­ent than any­thing you’ve heard before,” then goes on to describe the album as ​“part mil­len­ni­al escapism, part negro spir­i­tu­al,” and requests that the lis­ten­er con­sumes the whole project in one go so as to accom­pa­ny him on the per­son­al jour­ney he took cre­at­ing it. This is sound advice, as every facet of Elu­sive offers some­thing dif­fer­ent, and each song and joke will evoke dif­fer­ent reac­tionary emo­tions through­out an hour and 12 minutes. 

John­son begins the album top­i­cal­ly, touch­ing on the feel­ings of end-of-days dread felt glob­al­ly at the start of the pan­dem­ic with the track titled, ​“Bought An Axe.” John­son spoke with Paste mag­a­zine about the joke, say­ing that thoughts of how he might defend his loved ones in the event of a soci­etal col­lapse inspired his thoughts. ​“Imag­ine rush­ing to get sup­plies to sur­vive Armaged­don with the tim­ing of some­one doing their Christ­mas shop­ping Decem­ber 24^th,” John­son says. After the first song on the album, ​“I Like You Too (Part 1 Of A Love Sto­ry)” graces your ears with a soft and sexy pil­low talk vibe, John­son then tran­si­tions to one of the most relat­able sub­jects in com­e­dy — dating.

The titles of each track in the stretch of dat­ing-themed bits might have you think­ing that you know what it’s about, but you won’t see what’s com­ing. John­son begins his com­men­tary on love with a gen­er­al approach and a mild­ly melan­choly mood that works excep­tion­al­ly well with his comedic style, then, fol­low­ing anoth­er musi­cal track, tran­si­tions into a per­son­al retelling of his own experiences. 

Johnson’s style is high­ly obser­va­tion­al as he deliv­ers punch­line after punch­line designed to make you think about top­ics such as edu­ca­tion and the health­care sys­tem in Amer­i­ca, cement­ing this album’s sta­tus as both a sym­bol of the times and a mean­ing­ful piece of art that both enter­tains and teach­es. The young come­di­an brings the album to a close with a few per­fect­ly writ­ten and exe­cut­ed bits sur­round­ing the cur­rent polit­i­cal cli­mate and his point of view on being black in Amer­i­ca in today’s soci­ety. Track num­ber 31, ​“Con­spir­a­cy The­o­ries,” is a true high­light of this album as it brings atten­tion to press­ing issues with a sharp and unique brand of humor that can’t be ignored. 

Elu­sive is one of the must-lis­ten albums of 2021, and we promise you won’t regret it. The jokes will make your morn­ing com­mute much more bear­able, and some of the music tracks might just find their way onto your reg­u­lar playlists.

Elu­sive was released in June 2021.