There is a detail here that reorders everything else: St. Ivan The Terrible does not put his music on streaming. Not as a statement, as far as anyone can tell it simply is not there. Thee Elder Statesman 2, Carmina Ex Catacumbis and the rest of the catalogue are sold through his own website and nowhere else. In 2026 that is a decision with consequences, and the 25 views on this video are one of them. He is in his fifties, from the Bronx, and has been recording under this name for more than twenty years, having earlier worked as Joust the Terrorist. His stated influences Kool G Rap, KRS-One, LL Cool J, Big Daddy Kane, Slick Rick, Rakim, Guru are the list of a man who learned to write when writing was the point. He put out two projects this year already: Thee Elder Statesman 2, ten tracks with a different guest on every one and all of it produced by him, and Carmina Ex Catacumbis, seven tracks with D.R.U.G.S. Beats. Thee Elder Statesman 3 is due before the year is out, self-produced again, and this is the latest video from it. He produced the track himself, with Device Trax also a guest on the second Elder Statesman co-producing on bass, and DJ OneshotDeal mixing and mastering, whom he has described as a brother. The title is the thesis. The verse is a long address to people he watches become what they used to complain about, delivered without a hook and without a raised voice: "Forgot where you came from. Can't see where you going." His own site sums up the position more bluntly "no buffoonery, no gimmicks, no fake flexing" and at this stage of a career that is not a pose, it is a description of the work.
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