Eric Rollin finishes what he started with ‘The Ego Scout’

When Eric Rollin was a teenager, he stopped just short of becoming an Eagle Scout, bailing on the organization before starting work on his final project – a decision that continued to gnaw at him as the years passed.

“In the back of my mind, ever since I was young, I’ve always thought, ‘Man, I should have finished what I started,’” Rollin said in early April, discussing the seed that helped to give shape to his new album The Ego Scout, which he’ll celebrate in person at the Royal Oak Initiative on Thursday, April 9. “As you get older, you want to make sure your word is your bond, and especially to yourself. So, for me, this [album] is me holding myself accountable.”

Befitting the music’s more personal inspiration, the LP is also the first Rollin has issued under his own name, his previous releases having extended from his long-running (and still active) hip-hop collective, Mistar Anderson. The rapper said in more recent years the band members have talked about branching off into solo projects, adopting a Wu-Tang-like approach that allows each to pursue their own outside interests while still remaining part of the larger crew. And yet, Rollin acknowledged this decision proved a challenge for him, owing to a collaborative fire he said he has burned within from an early age.

“Ever since I started doing music, I’ve always collaborated with everybody,” the rapper said. “My mom and dad would always tell me, ‘Just do your own stuff.’ But I love working with people. I love writing with people. So, every project I’ve done up to this point, it’s always been done in collaboration.”

In revisiting his decision to walk away from the Eagle Scouts, Rollin said he had to reconsider who he was at age 18, describing his younger self as more “distracted,” prone to brushing aside certain responsibilities if they felt too much like work. “All I knew then was that I love music, and I like making it,” he said.

The attention to craft that Rollin has developed in the years since can be heard throughout The Ego Scout, surfacing in everything from the percussive cadence he adopts on “Light,” his vocals doubling as another rhythmic layer on the track, to the way the sun-kissed beat on “Need That” swings as if imbued with the same “Black boy joy” the rapper spits about on the song. This sense of exuberance reverberates throughout the release, with Rollin acknowledging the surrounding chaos but preferring to center his attentions on those places where the light has managed to breach the dark. 

“In my mind there is pain, but I keep stepping,” he raps on one track, his strides just long enough to clear any hurdles that appear in his path.

“If you focus too much on the darkness your world becomes dark. … Joy is something you have to practice, just like anything,” said Rollin, who credited this more hopeful mindset at least in part to the work he has done alongside children in Use Your Ears, a nonprofit that utilizes music as a tool to empower youth. “It’s helped me to become a lot more intentional about what I’m saying and how I’m saying it. … I have a daughter, and I work with youth all the time, so I wanted to be an example to them of someone who’s taking something, writing it, recording it, performing it, and then monetizing it. I wanted to be a walking, talking example of what I’m trying to teach the youth.”

These concepts extend into Rollin’s first children’s book, Firem’n Chit, which shares a name with the album-closing track on The Ego Scout and is taken from the certification that grants scouts the right to build campfires. “When I was in Boy Scouts, I was the most consistent person there who looked like me. There were some Black scouts that came and went, but I started in sixth grade and went all the way through until I was 18, and I was the only one,” he said. “So, when I did this book, I definitely had that in mind. … I thought it was important to have a teaching tool not just about nature and how to build a physical fire, but how to build a fire within yourself so that you can move through the world accordingly.”

In a way, Rollin has come to view the album and everything wrapped up in it, including the children’s book, as finally having completed his long-overdue service project – even if won’t come with an Eagle Scout badge. “I’m grateful for this album. It checks all the boxes, and it’s everything I desired at 18,” he said. “This, to me, is finishing something I started 20 years ago.”