Prince Elwood Strickland III began his music career as an engineer at the Greene Street Recording studio in New York, working on music for De La Soul, Tricky, the Jungle Brothers, Pete Rock and Prince Paul. But his dream was to make music himself.

He and fellow Greene Street producer Brian Boland recorded a seven song demo together. In 1998, Island Records founder Chris Blackwell left that label and formed the multimedia company Palm Pictures, and he signed the duo under the name Elwood.

In 2000, the lead single “Bush” was released in advance of its Steve Lillywhite-produced album The Parlance Of Our Time. An X-rated animated music video made by Chris Prynoski, creator of MTV’s Downtown series and an animator for the film Beavis and Butt-Head Do America, was released on the internet to promote the song. On release, the album had reviewers comparing Elwood to Sugar Ray, Everlast, Beck, G Love and Special Sauce, Getaway People, 2 Skinnee J’s, and The Bloodhound Gang.

Elwood’s second single “Sundown”, a modernized cover of the 1971 chart-topping Gordon Lightfoot song, found success on radio, reaching #33 on the US Modern Rock Chart in the summer of 2000. A third single, “Red Wagon”, was released in 2001 but did not chart.

In 2003, Strickland began producing again at Stackhouse Recording in New Jersey, then at Portland Underground Recording in Oregon a few years later. In 2004, Boland moved to LA, returning to music production as well.

In 2005, Elwood posted a sophomore album on the band’s own website. In 2013, an announcement was made that another album was in the works but as of 2021 it has not materialized. However, the group’s sophomore album El Cortez was made available on several streaming platforms in 2020.