Ben Glover remembers the first time he rapped for a crowd. It was 11 years ago during a hip-hop slam at the University of Chicago, and he was terrified.
“I didn’t know I was supposed to memorize the lyrics,” Glover says. “I was up on stage with this crumpled piece of computer paper I had printed them out on. It was all messed up because it had been in my pocket, and I was shaking super hard because I was nervous.”
All it took was a punchline — the proverbial payoff by which many rap legends established their pen — for the vibe to shift. He didn’t just hear his peer’s reaction, he felt it. That’s when Glover saw the ball go through the hoop for the very first time.
“In that very moment, I was like, ‘Oh yeah, this is what I need to be doing with my life,’” Glover says.
It wasn’t until six years later in March of 2020, fresh off serious considerations to give up music altogether, that he would release “bleach,” his debut single under the moniker Blvck Svm.
It stuck, and so did the other singles Glover released in the 18 months that followed. In December of 2021, he dropped everything and took up music full-time.
Fast forward three years. Glover released his debut album, michelinman, in November of last year. Now the 28-year-old emcee is rapidly approaching a million monthly listeners on Spotify, tapping in across nearly 200 countries. He’s waxing poetic over buttery-smooth instrumentation about hamachi collars in mezcal and miso marinades, winter truffles and sneaky flights to Osaka, and he’s doing it alongside legendary storytellers like Curren$y and Boldy James.
Maximize the product
How the hell did we get here, to a burgeoning wordsmith with an appetite for the art of fine dining?
“I went to a restaurant called Momotaro, in West Loop [Chicago]. I went with my homie Terrell, we got a bunch of sushi, and it was the first time that I ever had sushi that wasn’t a part of an ‘all-you-can-eat’ buffet type thing where you just put spicy mayo and soy sauce on everything,” Glover says. “I had never experienced sushi like that before. It was one of those dinners — maybe the first dinner — that I’ll never forget, like, specifically for the food itself.”
Credit: Michael Tinley
That was in 2022. By then, Glover had started turning enough profit from his music that he could indulge in the fashion and food he’d been rapping about. But that visit to Momotaro shaped his relationship with food, and he wove it into his music.
Since then, he’s embraced both the studio and the kitchen with a deeper level of focus, bridging a gap between the two with his words.
“Everything you could possibly rap about has been rapped about,” Glover says. “In the same way, there are only so many things you can make in a kitchen. There are only so many proteins available. There are only so many different versions of produce.”
That’s no excuse to not maximize the product, whether it’s an experimental release or a classic dish turned unforgettable. According to Glover, there are two ideal results when it comes to cooking in the studio and the kitchen: extraordinary things made ordinary, and ordinary things made extraordinary.
Both will be on display when Glover’s new album fills the air Jan. 26-27 during an immersive listening party at BRUTØ, Denver’s Michelin-starred, wood-hearth homage to brutalism, tucked into one of LoDo’s back-alley markets. This partnership came to fruition from a music video, inside a kitchen 680 miles southeast of Denver.
“Nonesuch in Oklahoma City was maybe the second restaurant I got a ‘yes’ from for the ‘BVCK OF HOUSE’ videos,” says Glover. “I didn’t know who Chef Kelly was; I only knew Chef Garrett and the team at Nonesuch, but the shoot was really good. Everything was super clean. It ended up being one of my favorite videos of the series.”
The “Kelly” Glover refers to is Kelly Whitaker, revered for his Id Est Hospitality restaurants, including Nonesuch, Denver’s Wolf’s Tailor and BRUTØ, among others. When Whittaker saw the “acorndiet” video, shot in the OKC kitchen, he had to reach out.
“Music and food are both art forms, and we’re always looking to do more than just guest chef dinners,” Whitaker wrote in an email to Boulder Weekly. “He shared his listening party vision, and we couldn’t say no.”
‘What you see is what you get’
The music of Blvck Svm and the aura of BRUTØ is a match on par with caviar and champagne. The space is much like an arena, with seats wrapping a counter, all facing BRUTØ’s beating heart, the hearth oven. It’s inherently intimate, and conversation between the team and guests is easy.
“This experience will be like a personal, salon-style event coupled with an intentional dinner inspired by Ben’s lyrics,” Whitaker says.
Both BRUTØ and Glover share an ethos when it comes to artistic approach. When Byron Gomez, known in Boulder for his since-closed Puerto-Rican chicken joint Pollo Tico, took over as executive chef, he helped mold BRUTØ into its current iteration: crude, raw, technical, unique.
During their upcoming collaboration, Glover will run through michelinman, playing each song in full. At the conclusion of each track, Gomez and the kitchen at BRUTØ will present a dish inspired by the track that preceded it.
This stop in Denver is the first in an intimate series Glover will be taking all across North America — exploring the space between speakers and plates, forks and microphones. The eardrum and the taste bud, conduits of our two most powerful senses, have been obsessed over by great musicians and chefs for centuries. In one sitting, Glover and BRUTØ aim to satisfy both.
“It’s unadorned, straightforward, ‘what you see is what you get’ cooking at the highest possible level,” Glover says. “That’s how I approach music.”
ON THE PLATE: Blvck Svm michelinman listening party. 6 p.m. Sun.-Mon., Jan. 26-27, BRUTØ, 1801 Blake St., Denver. $300