Watsky: The Hip Hop Poet by Steven Verdile

Watsky The Hip Hop Poet Quirky Writer Unique Rapper Weird Poet Modern Actor Talented Performer

Writings about the Poet turned Rapper

Watsky: The Hip Hop Poet “There’s 7 billion 46 million people on the planet and most of us have the audacity to think we matter.” - George Watsky

All content found in these pages is the original property of it’s creators and owners. Articles, interviews, photographs, and other texts were collected and organized for the compilation of this book. Some texts have been condensed, reformated, and edited to increase readability. Photographs have been edited, resized and cropped to optimize their printed appearance. Special thanks to the following companies and individuals who’s content has been included: George Watsky, Stephen Stills, Joel Brown, Boston Globe, TEDx, Regina Mogilevskaya, Marco R. della Cava, USA Today, Mattison Keesy, Reddit and it’s contributing users, Mikhael Agofonov, MySpace, and Chris Grenville. This book was printed, bound, and distributed by Blurb Inc. It was produced in the United States of America on acid-free paper. Steven Verdile designed and edited this book for educational purposes, and it is not commercially sold. Digital versions can be found on Behance.net and Issuu.com Typefaces used include 9pt Courier, 9pt Adobe Garamond Pro, and 9pt Helvetica. Other fonts and sizes of these typefaces were also used.

Contents 5 / When the Audience Controls the Performance 11 / Lucky 15 / Cardboard Castles Interview 21 / You Can Do This To 25 / Tiny Glowing Screens Pt 2. 29 / All You Can Do Interview 41 / Cannonball 45 / Ten Things You Should Know About Watsky 51 / X Infinity Interview 65 / Knots 69 / Ask Me Anything Interview

When the Audience

Con trols the Perfor mance 4

Plugging into Poetry as a Media Platform by Joel Brown Boston Globe | December 4th, 2009 It’s a hook likely to catch anyone who’s been to the theater lately. Audiences at George Watsky’s world premiere oneman show, “Where the Magic Happens,” will be instructed to turn on their cellphones. That’s right, turn them on. The show is about “the magic of technology, how being constantly plugged in and connected with each other can drive us further apart,” says comedian, writer, and slam poet Watsky, 23, an Emerson College student. “You go in [the theater] now and our curtain speech says, `Please turn off your cellphone, no texting.’ And rightly so! It’s important,” says Paul Daigneault, producing artistic director of SpeakEasy Stage Company, which presents the show Sunday and Monday at the Boston Center for the Arts. “George was interested in taking some of this and saying what would it be like if it was OK to use your phone during the show, and making text messaging the way the audience is interacting with him during the show. And I thought `Whoa!’ “ Daigneault says. “This is sort of breaking down the boundaries, and it’s interesting to see if we can create a theatrical experience from this.” On stage, Watsky offers the clean-cut Gen-Y angst of Michael Cera channeled through the rapid-fire flow of the poetry-slam star that he is. He’s performed everywhere from “Russell Simmons presents Def Poetry” on HBO boldly declaiming about being a high-school virgin - to the Opera House in his native San Francisco.

Watsky: The Hip Hop Poet

In “Where the Magic Happens,” Watsky says, “I’m at home alone on Friday night waiting for a call from my brother to go out for the night, and the audience is invited into my bedroom, and they will have to turn their cellphones on, and there are different departure points in the piece at which the audience has a choice between two different poems.” He’ll ask the audience, for instance, if he and his brother should go to a bar or a big club, and based on the poll results texted to him, he’ll perform the appropriate poem. The live polling program runs on a laptop and projector onstage, so the audience can see the results as they come in. “I’m plugged in all the time on all these different media platforms,” says Watsky, who lives in the South End. “I’m on Facebook, which I check pretty neurotically, and a bunch of different e-mail accounts, and a MySpace page and a YouTube account and obviously a cellphone. There’s very rarely a period in any given day when I’m not in touch. . . . I definitely think it’s an addiction I have, but one that has helped me get my art out there, and I’m trying to explore the positives and negatives of that at the same time. I don’t think I’m much more addicted than anyone else.” Watsky is headed for Los Angeles soon to try to make acting and writing happen as a career, while he continues to offer spoken-word performances at colleges. He says he’s got one more class to finish up at Emerson’s LA branch, and then he’ll come back to collect his diploma in the spring. Producing “Where the Magic Happens” meets SpeakEasy’s mission to offer world-premiere shows, especially from art-

When the Audience Controls the Performance

ists who have local ties, says Daigneault. “The other thing that got me going on this is my desire to keep my audience young, so SpeakEasy will be around for a long time.”

“I definitely think it’s an addiction I have, but one that has helped me get my art out there” In keeping with the youth angle, the show is directed by SpeakEasy artistic associate Jim Fagan, 24, whom Daigneault has tasked with finding emerging artists. Last year SpeakEasy considered producing a cabaret or afterhours series, Fagan explains, and they looked at a variety of artists to participate. A SpeakEasy intern from Emerson introduced them to Watsky. Although the larger series didn’t come off, both Daigneault and Fagan wanted to go ahead and do a show with Watsky. “He seems so young, but he seems to have such a keen selfawareness and an ability to use that to his advantage,” says Fagan. “I don’t think many of our peers hold that kind of ability. He can look at himself, at our generation, and he can be extremely honest, extremely funny and extremely critical . . . and I like that about George a lot.”

lucky lucky lucky

my ass 8

Lucky Watsky | TEDx Performance (2011) It’s the end of a very long week I’m sitting in the 30th row of a 747 from Dallas to Los Angeles The captain has signaled our final decent, my seat back has returned to the up right position, my tray table has been stowed I’m finally going home When a gurgle, under my seat buckle, tells me that lunch is gearing up for a second appearance A frantic search teaches me that DELTA airlines doesn’t regularly restock seat pockets with sick bags, so I do the only thing logical I can think of, and try to Magyar my Sky Mall catalog into a make shift haversack But before I can crease the outside edge, my body betrays me, which means that I’m sitting there, wearing my stomach acid as a loose tuxedo, while the entire plane including the hot girls across the aisle whisper and gag next craned as we make our torturous decent into LAX and as the entire air jumbo jet deplanes slowly around me A thought crosses my mind, how do you not restock a plane with sick bags you INCOMPETENT AIRLINE, I’M GIVING MY PLASTIC WINGS BACK! And then a second thought crosses my mind, I think this story is good enough for Cosmo, so lucky me for the life experience, lucky no one I know will have to find out about this, lucky the plane didn’t crash, lucky for planes in the first place I mean if I had thrown up on myself in a covered wagon, some settler would have been all like “AYE! Aye we brocus, spocus, a mile back, and if you don’t quit sulking and help pull

Watsky: The Hip Hop Poet

us we might not be able to ford this river before night fall in which this cause you’re going to smell mighty good to the Grizzlies.” So lucky the atmosphere puts planes on its back The airs so thick it bumps against out ears that’s how we hear, lucky there’s so much carbon around Lucky for granite, granite has done big things for us, lucky conditions on this planet were perfect for live cocktail to turn a couple of atoms into a amoeba, into a cheetah, lucky that one monkey finally got his act together and turned into a dude Don’t forget the vocal chords, the lungs, lucky the opposable thumbs, the disposable mans, and the glands that’s make lanolin that dismantle hand radios and bands that make videos for jams that witty oats to brands and lucky for that one reunion on Cape Cod right first had to understand my fathers side of the family Some say if you listen closely to those old wooden hallways you can hear the ghost of Woody Allen groaning at night “I’m not dead yet you schmucks.” The living, they gather around the dining room table, sharing, sharp class, saying lucky, lucky, lucky my ass You calls this locks fresh water, salt water either you lie, the salmon so dry it must be the kind they catch in the sky Oh Steven’s health oh well yes they removed a tumour however that was the cancer’s tumor, yeah cancers can grow tumors too smarty guy, doctor Rubén removed the cancer’s tumor, the original cancer is now malignant in the skin cell,

Lucky

they couldn’t tell his mole cause his misalignment stole the pigment and he looked like an albino with three shoulders he tried to dye himself back to normal in a bath of coca cola but now he’s got dimentcha and he thinks he’s Ale Roka, oui it savsha and degoya hey I can’t complain he’s better then Roderick forecasting rain. That’s how they always end the story in my family, with I can’t complain, grandma you just complained for 45 straight minutes without breathing or blinking, the nice girl is trying to take our drink order If I could get a word in edge wise I’d say lucky the stomach flu, lucky that 2 month itch I’d rather not talk about, lucky because perfectly healthy is not a neutral state, perfectly healthy is a perpetual full body youforia, but this is my fathers family and my complaining about their complaining is both concrete prove that in one of them an unfair generalization of a proud people Take my dad, you know, lucky he never caught a zip gun ricochet to the face,

lucky because perfectly healthy is not a neutral state, but if you lean in you can see a little blue dimple on his chin from fourth grade sometime in the 1950s when trying to figure out how to get ink into a ball point pen, he accidentally slammed the Bic into his jaw tattooing himself for life, and

Watsky: The Hip Hop Poet

lucky he did cause that wasn’t a ball point pen at all, it was a flag pole, ten year old Paul Merman Watsky was claiming that little patch of skin for himself and held his ground even as this unfamiliar man creeps up on 70 around him I can see it in my dad’s eyes every time he laughs at one of his own idiotic puns, everywhere he laments the over bearing Jewish mother that made him wanna tip out of his Manhattan apartment window like a potted plant, and lucky he backed away from the edge, and not lucky just because his reproductive equipment was the genetic heat of my eventual existence But also because smiles are delinquent teenagers, they like to gather in large groups, they leave marks on the wall of your face to tell you of a life well lived, they’re hard to get rid of but once they’re gone you wonder why you pushed them away, you wonder into their dusty old rooms at night and hold back tears at the edge of their bed and sit there rocking back and fourth thinking lucky the bend in your box spring that sent two strong swimmers into the world as decent sons So lucky San Francisco, lucky the lights over the harbor, lucky we’re so young, both of us, dad because time is like a million mile wooden dock and we’re at the very end, the very young end you’re practically dangling our toes in the water, even if you’re a hundred years old you’re still dangling,

Lucky

and you’ll shoot back, you’re damn right I’m dangling, in all the wrong places You’re completely missing my point, because I just vomited in my lap in an overbooked jumbo jet, sitting here smelling extremely human but I still have my feet on the ground So lucky we’re not live stock, lucky we’re programmed to think babies are cute, otherwise we’d probably ignore them and they’d crawl anomalously in large packs America is a plump kid in husky overalls and I plan to live off the fat of the land, this country is a big cupcake straddling two oceans and lucky it wasn’t me and you and someone had to fight and die so we could rot our teeth on the frosting, this planet is made mostly of carbon and Teflon and one day we’ll slide off it like so much burnt stir fry, there’s a lot that goes into a moss-covered rock, lucky there are so many cool bugs under them and it sucks that we eat a few by mistake at night but at least we don’t crawl into spider’s mouths while we’re sleeping, a web of impossible coincidences has crystallized into this moment, look around you, history is a foot, this nights smells like no other ever had or ever quite will, so don’t hold your nose when you walk past me I just murmured myself to get everyone on this plane an amusing party story. So you better thank those lucky stars, all 3 hundred billion of them, lucky you, lucky me

Cardboard Castles Interview

by Regina Mogilevskaya | March 28, 2013

When you glance at 26-year-old George Watsky, your first impression may not be that this is one of the most talented artists making an impressive dent in the hip-hop world today. Why? The innocent, wide-eyed stare? The wiry frame and flannel button-downs? The slight lisp? Good thing, then, that none of these attributes have affected the cold hard facts. Watskyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s latest album, Cardboard Castles, which was released on March 12, surged up to number one on the iTunes hip-hop charts, beating out Macklemore and Ryan Lewis, who had been sitting comfortably on top for 22 weeks. Watsky is something of an anomaly amongst rappers today: heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a masterful lyricist whose songs range in emotional depth, often going back and forth between hilarious anecdotes to lightning fast, artful churns of rhymes that reveal raw content about the intricacies of everyday life, particularly as a teenager or a 20-something-year-old. Preparing for a world tour, Watsky took a break from his rehearsal schedule to talk with us before his performance at the Paradise Rock Club on April 1.

Watsky: The Hip Hop Poet

How did you first become involved with spoken-word poetry? I started doing spoken word in San Francisco when I was a freshman in high school. In 2003, I ended up going to see Def Poetry Jam, and a year later I finally got on the show in its final season. That was what allowed me to start touring as a professional artist. I toured college campuses for four years…rapping the whole time while doing spoken word, but I didn’t really catch a break until 2011, when I started getting traction on the Internet. How did your time in Boston influence your work? Going to Emerson College helped me move my writing skills into other areas, like theater and screenwriting. Emerson also just helps you have a practical understanding of what it’s like to be an artist and how realistic your expectations need to be if you want to support yourself. You can’t just go out into the world expecting everybody to bow and anoint you the next brilliant artist who’s going to transform the world. You have to be super practical. Walk me through your journey since graduation. I moved to L.A. with the intention of trying to make it as an actor. I actually got really far on my first audition!

Cardboard Castles Interview

I almost got cast in Project X…and then I didn’t get any callbacks for the next year. I realized I couldn’t just place my fate in the hands of casting directors, so I started churning out my own content. One of my videos went very viral and that changed my trajectory. All of a sudden, people began discovering my other work and coming to my shows. How does Cardboard Castles differ from your first album? I think that my musicality has improved since my Watsky album. I don’t consider myself a great singer, but I’ve tried to at least hit my notes better. I think it’s got some of my most accessible material that I’ve ever done on it, and the weirdest. I’m proud of that paradox. Who are some musicians you’re inspired by? Any dream artists you’d love to work with? If I could have my absolute wish, I’d have to do something with Andre 3000. I grew up listening to Jurassic 5, and Chali 2na, their lead baritone, is one of my favorite MCs of all time. I’d really want to do a track with him. And I mean, every kid who grew up listening to hip-hop in the early 2000s grew up idolizing Eminem. I’d love to do a song with Regina Spektor—I think that would be a really cool collaboration.

Watsky: The Hip Hop Poet

Do you remember the first big show you played? How was that experience? My very first slam poetry final that I did in San Francisco when I was 16 wasn’t the biggest show I’ve ever played, but it was the biggest leap in scale I’d ever made in a short time. I remember it so powerfully—feeling like I mattered, feeling like my voice was important, feeling like there were people out there who wanted to hear what I had to say. My show at the Gramercy Theatre in Manhattan last July was the best night of my life to date. I did an autograph line afterward and was there for four hours on the curb. The tour is a really important moment for me because I get to play the Fillmore in San Francisco, which is where I saw pretty much every single concert that I went to growing up. That’s really a bucket list important thing for me, to get to play that venue in my hometown.

â&#x20AC;&#x153;

Cardboard Castles Interview

there were people out there who wanted to hear what I had to say. 19

Watsky to Aspiring Rappers:

Can

You

Do This Too

He’s Leading a Third Wave of the Genre That’s Distinctly DIY by Marco R. della Cava USA Today | June 3rd, 2013 Rapper Watsky may not be blowing up like Psy, but he’s definitely reaching a boil. For starters, he has gone from poetry-slam events in unknown bars to a performance here at the iconic Fillmore Auditorium, a musical shrine that 26-year-old Bay Area native George Watsky knew only as an audience member. “I saw Ludacris perform here in 2001, so for me to be playing the Fillmore is just crazy,” says Watsky, sporting a San Francisco Giants baseball cap. “I wanted to be a rapper before I was a poet.” He may well wind up being more than both. Beyond making headway as a musician (his current tour supports the album Cardboard Castles, whose viral-hit videos have helped push his YouTube views to 200 million), he has made an acting turn in Netflix’s return to Arrested Development and is in talks with a cable network about starring in a sketch-comedy series. “My parents taught me to always be honest about who I am,” Watsky says by way of explaining his growing popularity. “People often say that I’m speaking to their experience.” Watsky is the first to acknowledge that his was not a Boyz n the Hood childhood: Precocious teen becomes a city poetry-slam champ in high school, heads to Boston’s Emerson College, where he studies screenwriting and acting, and starts turning his poetry into rap.

Watsky: The Hip Hop Poet

His speed (as evidenced in his 2011 video Pale Kid Raps Fast, 24 million views to date) and his humor (in 4AM Monday, he describes himself as Mos Def meets Woody Allen) are his calling cards. While the self-described nerd admires Eminem, Watsky feels he is part of a new white rapper tradition. “White rap is in its third phase, with the first being Vanilla Ice, who made it as a novelty, and the second being Eminem, whose tough life story was similar to other AfricanAmerican rappers,” he says earnestly, as if laying out a college thesis. “In this third phase, the consumer of that past rap is becoming the creator,” Watsky says. “People like me and Macklemore (who with Ryan Lewis is behind the hit Thrift Shop) are telling our own stories for an audience that may not have a context for the founding fathers of rap.”

“There’s a quirky relatability that resonates with kids in the suburbs.” So while childhood hardships may not be grist for his rapping mill, other universal experiences are, including “being crushed, personally and professionally,” and losing friends to suicide. “Watsky is a reflection of the common-man rapper movement,” says Jermaine Hall, editor of Vibe. “There’s a quirky relatability that resonates with kids in the suburbs.” Hall says the Internet has made the march of self-made rappers inevitable. Their success “is directly attributed to being able to build a digital core that buys into their brand

You Can Do This Too

before a label does. If your music is good, the audience will find you.” Watsky says rap is perfectly suited to him as a “politically and socially conscious kid” who uses music like a Trojan horse. “I’ve always been political, but nobody wants to have that forced on them, so I try to use humor to subvert the message so I can go in deeper,” he says. Cardboard Castles makes his point. Drawn from his own childhood making medieval castles from household scraps, the song and accompanying video serve as an ode to the optimistic notion that perseverance in the face of skepticism pays off. “Just use what you have at your disposal,” he says. “I can have an idea, record it, shoot a video and get it up online in a day. The power is ours.” Watsky plans to keep it that way. He has rejected offers to join a label (“They want to keep the masters, which is an issue”) and didn’t think twice when turning down a lucrative offer a few years ago from T-Mobile to riff on its new phones. “With rap, the expectation your audience has of you is honesty,” he says. “When a corporation hijacks your voice, you’re dead in the water.” If ever a venue’s walls have heard those lines before, it’s the Fillmore, birthplace of a counterculture revolution that continues thanks to a pale smart kid from the neighborhood.

Thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s

7 billion 46 million people on the planet and most of us have the

audacity to think

we matter. 24

Tiny Glowing Screens Pt. 2 Watsky | Cardboard Castles (2013) There’s 7 billion 46 million people on the planet And most of us have the audacity to think we matter. Hey, you hear the one about the comedian who croaked? Someone stabbed him in the heart, just a little poke But he keeled over ‘cause he went into battle wearing chain mail made of jokes Hey, you hear the one about the screenwriter who passed away? He was giving elevator pitches and the elevator got stuck halfway He ended up eating smushed sandwiches they pushed through a crack in the door And repeating the same crappy screenplay idea about talking dogs ‘til his last day Hey, you hear the one about the fisherman who passed? He didn’t jump oﬀ that ledge He just stepped out into the air and pulled the ground up towards him really fast Like he was pitching a line and went fishing for concrete The earth is a drum and he’s hitting it on beat The reason there’s smog in Los Angeles is ‘cause if we could see the stars If we could see the context of the universe in which we exist And we could see how small each one of us is Against the vastness of what we don’t know No one would ever audition for a McDonalds commercial again And then where would we be? No frozen dinners and no TV And is that a world we want to text in? Either someone just microwaved popcorn Or I hear the sound of a thousand people Pulling their heads out of their asses in rapid succession The people are hunched over in Boston They’re starting app stores and screen printing companies in San Francisco They’re grinning in Los Angeles

Watsky: The Hip Hop Poet

Like they’ve got fishhooks in the corners of their mouth But don’t paint me like the good guy ‘cause every time I writeI get to choose the Angle that you view me and select the nicest light You wouldn’t respect me if you heard the typewriter chatter tap tap Tapping through my mind at night The same stupid tape loop of old sitcom dialogue And tattered memories of a girl I got to grind on in high school Filed carefully on rice paper My heart is a colored pencil But my brain is an eraser I don’t want a real girl, I want to trace her from a catalogue Truth be told I’m unlikely to hold you down Cause my soul is a crowded subway train And people keep deciding to get on the next one that rolls through town I’m joining a false movement in San Francisco I’m frowning and hunched over in Boston I’m smiling in Los Angeles like I’ve got fishhooks in the corners of my mouth And I’m celebrating on weekends Because there are 7 billion 47 million people on the planet And I have the audacity to think I matter I know it’s a lie but I prefer it to the alternative Because I’ve got a tourniquet tied at my elbow I’ve got a blunt wrap filled with compliments and I’m burnin it You say to go to sleep but I been bouncing off my bedroom walls Since I was hecka small We’re every age at once And tucked inside ourselves like Russian nesting dolls My mother is an 8 year old girl

Tiny Glowing Screens Pt. 2

My grandson is a 74 year old retiree whose kidneys just failed And that’s the glue between me and you That’s the screws and nails We live in a house made of each other And if that sounds strange that’s because it is Someone please freeze time So I can run around turning everyone’s pockets inside out And remember... You didn’t see shit.

You didn’t see shit.

All You Can Do Interview

by Mattison Keesey | August 30, 2014

In today’s music industry, It can be said that many well known rappers fail to add heart and soul into their lyrics. By preaching mostly about drugs, money and degrading women, the struggle of putting a positive message out to their audience is ever prevalent. Unfortunately, it is because of this negative message from main-stream rappers that many people get this prejudged notion of what rap and hip-hop songs are supposed to be about. Some artists, however, are establishing a unique style and lyricism which is not afraid to go against the grain to completely defy the status quo of what the typical rap song is supposed to be about. Altwire recently had the privilege to speak with one of these individuals who are fighting the good fight one line at a time in slam-poet-turned-rapper, George Watsky. While being best known as a rapper, Watsky is not afraid to branch out and touch upon other genres of music to help enrich his one of a kind sound. Watsky recently released a new album, ‘All You Can Do’, on August 12th, which was a huge hit in multiple countries, and will be starting a world tour for the album starting in September. Here’s what Watsky had to say about his new album and upcoming tour!

Watsky: The Hip Hop Poet

Can you give a little background about yourself for readers who may not know much about you? Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m from San Francisco, I started off in the arts by doing spoken word poetry when I was a teenager. I was about 15 or 16, and I saw this show called Def Poetry Jam, which was on HBO, it was a theater show and really fell in love with spoken word. For the next 5 or 10 years, I got really involved with it. I did competitions, and open mics, then when I was 19 years old, I was on the final season of Def Poetry, right before the show was canceled. From there, I started touring college campuses. I spent about 4 years doing heavy college campus touring, hundreds of gigs. I was playing in cafeterias, student centers, and stuff like that. I went all over the country, just traveling alone, to do stand-up, but the whole time I was trying to get my independent music career off the ground. I was putting out albums, totally independently, and I used the money I made touring college campuses to fund my first few music videos. I actually went to college in Boston while doing this. I was still doing spoken word things after I graduated in 2010, and in 2011, there was a viral rapping video that got millions of hits overnight. Then I went on the Ellen show, and that was all funded through the spoken word gigs that I did. That one video kind of got the snow ball

All You Can Do Interview

rolling for me getting an audience, and I was determined after that happened to try to turn out as much music as I could to try to keep the fan base growing. So for last 3 years, since my video happened, I have been trying to stay really consistent putting content out. It wasn’t until 2012 that I was able to finally make the transition from college gigs, to playing concerts with my band. It took a lot of determination to make that happen because when you’re successful in one world, it’s tough to get a booking agent to see what you see in transitioning to another one. In 2012, I went on this tour called the “Nothing Like The First Time” tour which I halfway did myself since I called, emailed bookers and taking door deals for venues.

“There was a viral rapping video that got millions of hits overnight. Then I went on the Ellen show, and that was all funded through the spoken word gigs that I did.” It was pretty successful. Then I put out ‘Cardboard Castles’, which was my first album since the internet flash happened in 2013. We went on tour for that and that was even more successful than the last one. We did better numbers and then I went back at it and just did Warped Tour this past summer. So now this will

Watsky: The Hip Hop Poet

basically be our third national tour that we are doing. Who would you say your biggest musical influence is? I have a lot of influences that fall on different sides of the spectrum. I have people who have really influenced my writings which is spoken word poetry nobody has ever heard of, and ones that are really big poetry fans. But I guess one of my biggest ones is Beau Sia who really influenced my persona on stage. My stage persona is very different then just talking to me normally. I really do try to make my music sound honest, so the way that I talk is similar to how I talk in conversation, it’s really not a voice or anything. I have definitely been influenced by guys like Eminem and Busta Rhymes, but if you listen to my music you wouldn’t think they’re similar, except for maybe the rhyme schemes and styles. The stuff that I rap about is

“My stage persona is very different then just talking to me normally.” very different. Guys like Atmosphere have been inspiring to me, and really people who have built any kind of fan bases without going corporate, without having major label deals. In terms of building a career, that really inspires me.

All You Can Do Interview

What song on your new album means the most to you and why? I didn’t even think about that. I wrote about 30 songs when I started the album, and cut a lot of them. It doesn’t include any songs that I wasn’t passionate about. I did a song called ‘Cannon Ball’ which is the last song on the album that I’m proud of. I always try to include some spoken word poetry in my albums because I have this background in poetry, and I have an opportunity to expose people to spoken word even though they may not listen to it otherwise. ‘Cannon Ball’ is basically a piece of spoken word that has some chorus on either side and Stephen Stills actually sings the chorus. The album is kind of a tribute to may parents in the era of music they grew up on, late 60’s early 70’s, psychedelic rock and folk rock, so that was one incorporated with the past, a really good example of that. I like the song ‘Let’s Get High And Watch Planet Earth’ too. It’s a sillier song, and has a very short verse, but I really like the melody and it doesn’t sound like anything else I have done before. It’s a love song, a silly love song, about getting high and watching nature shows but also experiencing the feelings of getting old with somebody you really love so I really like that song too.

Watsky: The Hip Hop Poet

I wanted to discuss you dedicating this album to your parents, and putting your dad on the front of the album, and your mom on the back cover. Is there a reason you chose this album for that over the other ones? ‘Cardboard Castles’ was an album that I was proud of but I wanted to make a record that felt less self-indulgent and tried to shine the spotlight on some other people. The people who were influential in raising me, and gave them credit for how much of a hand they had in what I’m doing now. My dad is a poet, my mom is an elementary school librarian so they both really instilled the love of language in me. They both moved to San Fransisco around the time of the summer of love, and influenced the album in that way. Also because my stage name is Watsky, it’s my last name, they’re Clair Watsky, and Paul Watsky, so I thought there was something kind of cool about putting different Watsky’s on the cover. The inside booklet is all a photo book of my family history going back to the 1800’s. I thought it was cool to give a spotlight to the people who raised me and my background. All of the transitions on the album are interviews that I had with my parents. I recorded them talking about a bunch of different things. For ‘Cardboard Castles’ I interviewed a 10-year-old kid to sort of represent the younger version of myself. In some

All You Can Do Interview

ways this album is a response to ‘Cardboard Castles’ which was a very nostalgic album about childhood, and this one is not a nostalgic album in the same way, it’s more looking in the other direction about getting older. So I interviewed my parent about their experiences and at certain points in the album you hear them talking about different periods in their life. Is there any one song that you would dedicate to your parents? They’re referenced in a lot of songs. If there is one song where the influence musically comes through, there are some more than others, like ‘Lets Get High And Watch Planet Earth’, ‘Hand Over Hand’, and ‘Grass Is Greener’. They have that soul rock influence. ‘Never Let It Die’ has a spoken section for my mom at the end, and there is a piece of poetry at the end of this song, about my family coming through Ellis Island from Poland. ‘All You Can Do’ hit number 1 on iTunes in 4 different countries, and number 2 in 4 others. How did you feel about that? It’s exciting. I spent so long performing for very few people, in playing these small colleges, that I really appreciate having an audience now and I’ll never take it for granted. How many people actually listen to my stuff is gratifying. You work extremely hard on

Watsky: The Hip Hop Poet

a project, then when you put it out to the world and and it lands with a thud, it feels great. I’m really excited that its doing well. You have an upcoming tour, starting in Denmark and ending in India, are you pretty excited about it? Yeah, I’m especially excited for India. I feel like I don’t know how long I’m gonna be able to tour for, and I’ll do it for as long as I am able to, but you don’t always get to choose when you career ends, sometime it just happens to you, so every time we go out I’m trying to treat it – not like I’m expecting it to be the last one – but that it could be the last one. For instance, I’ll be sitting down with my tour manager today and we will be talking about how we are going to make this tour really special for everyone who is involved. My touring party is like family, they’re not a group of hired guns or different mercenary musicians, and roadies and stuff like that. These are friends that we grew up with who have learned to fill different roles, as merch person, tour manager, musician etc. Nobody is there because they have been hired by a label to do something. Touring for us is not about grinding it out, at least for me it’s not like saying “Oh, we have to do this so we can get more fans and make more money,” it’s about saying “getting the tour is the payoff that we’ve earned from

All You Can Do Interview

working really hard, we have to enjoy it”. We get to play music in front of people who love you for a living, and that’s something that we have to enjoy. That extends into why we go to weird places where I may not have that many fans. I may not have that many fans in India, but I get a chance to travel to a part of the world and get taken there by heart. That’s why were going to Australia too. I know we have fans in Australia, but it’s still super expensive to play

“We get to play music in front of people who love you for a living, and that’s something that we have to enjoy. ” bring and play with a full band versus going over with a DJ where you can go make some money. At our level, you’re selling out 500-1000 person venues, and that still doesn’t necessarily carry the overhead for bring a 10 person crew all the way to Australia. Were doing it because we built a base in the United States that gives us a financial cushion to do things like that. I’m really stoked and every time we go to Europe, we wonder what the line-up is going to be like. Can we go to Denmark, can we go to Sweden next time. Maybe we’ll go to Iceland next time. It’s fun for us to figure that out.

Watsky: The Hip Hop Poet

Who will be opening for you? Different people in different markets. The a band called The La Fontaines in Europe. They’re a rock band with hip-hop included in their music. In the US is a guy named Kyle, very common name, may be hard to search on Google. But his label is called Super Duper, and his name is Kyle. The guy who produced the album, Anderson Paak is playing both Europe and the US with us. He’ll be doing a 25 minute set opening every show. He’s going to be singing with me too. In Australia we don’t have any supporting acts, it’s just us going over there. That is all I have for you, but is there anything else that you would like to add? I would just add to take the album for what it is. I think that it can be confusing to some folks, who expect to go in getting a traditional hip-hop album. I grew up on hip-hop, but the album in particular is an album that I made, not for people who don’t listen to hip-hop, but for people who listen to lots of different types of music. Because of the music my parents raised me on, I wanted [the album] to feel really eclectic musically so I think for hip-hop fans it’s been a little hard to swallow, because in some ways it’s a rock album, then it goes to being like a folk album, and I’m rapping on it. It’s a collage of different styles. I just urge people to keep an

All You Can Do Interview

open mind when they are listening to it and to not expect on genre or another. Also, to know that I’ll come back and I’ll do another mix-tape, that’s more straight down the middle, but I was kind of experimenting with this one. I had the chance to hear your song ‘Bet Against Me’ and it definitely goes from one genre, right to another. Yeah, that one sounds kind of like a Rage Against the Machine song at the end, and then you have ‘My First Stalker’ which is like 200 chords in the background, and then ‘Cannon Ball’ is more of a folk rock song. ‘Boomerang’ is like a 90’s song. That’s all I would really say to anybody out there who is reading the interview and thinking about checking the album out. Genre wise, just keep an open mind about it, it’s going to be a mix of a lot of different things.

I’m

so far from

perfect, So far it’s been

worth it 40

Cannonball ft. Stephen Stills Watsky | All You Can Do (2014) | Stephen Stills | I don’t know what was wrong But I wasn’t as strong I’ve seen daisies hold cannonballs above them But if this was a dream I still know that I’ve seen Fields of daisies hold cannonballs above them | Watsky | I’m so far from perfect You still loved me when I so far from deserved it If I’m so brave why does looking you in the eye take every ounce of my courage? I hang my face to the linoleum and count the freckles on the floor All of us, all of us are a galaxy of tiny little storms The good and evil in me wage a bloody civil war The missiles whistle through me then the rebel pistols roar I shiver and the final slivers of my chivalry retreat my shriveled core I can’t imagine the I’ll ever be happy like before Before, before We’re sitting in a field in Golden Gate Park oﬀ Fulton and 4th And I’ve never felt less alone Just a block from the home I’ve outgrown Five feet and forty years to the right from where dad proposed An inch above this casserole of stones, grass and mud, rusty needles, Lost guitar picks, Indian tombs, and dinosaur bones Everything happened all at once And the world is spinning like a hubcap, and not just because of the drugs We hugged and laid there in each others’ arms all night

Watsky: The Hip Hop Poet

Even when the sprinklers cried on us we didn’t mind We had the rest of our lives to be dry So we stayed until the edges of the sky turned light I would have stay until our hair turned white The mosquitoes arrived to feast on time Got drunk at our expense, we didn’t mind We let them bite, we kept on kissing and obliged Say “bottoms up, you’ve only got til Tuesday so enjoy the ride!”

Even when the sprinklers cried on us we didn’t mind

We had the rest of our lives to be dry And I couldn’t imagine that I would ever be unhappy again And I whispered in your ear that this moment is already a poem That I just figured out my first tattoo was going to be of bug bites Decided I’d commemorate their bloody drink By printing three circles on my ankle, perfect and pink in permanent ink The beautiful wounds that will keep me, you and this moment forever linked To remind me when I fail myself, when I fail everyone around me When I misfire and come tearing through your walls When the cocktail of humiliation and pain poisons my veins And this carnival of carnage, this mansion of garbage,

Cannonball

This parking lot of carcasses, This heartbreak party drains the spirit that remains That I have been a part of something worthwhile To remind me of the pleasure your pulse The measure of your breath The rise and fall of our fortunes and our chests These spectacular triumphs and flops That even if that moment meant nothing to the universe, It’s the closest thing to God I’ve got I’m so far from perfect So far it’s been worth it | Stephen Stills | But if this was a dream I still know that I’ve seen Fields of daises hold cannonballs above them I don’t know what was wrong But I wasn’t as strong I’ve seen daisies hold cannonballs above them But if this was a dream I still know that I’ve seen Fields of daisies hold cannonballs above them

10 Things

You Should Know About Watsky 44

Californian Rapping Poet Talks the Rules of Rhyming. by Mikhael Agafonov MySpace.com | October 4th, 2016 Not every rapper calls himself a poet, but then again not every poet knows how to adjust his rhyming to the beat. Luckily for Watsky, he learned a winning formula of rhymes + beats early on and has been adding a much needed dose of literacy and self-awareness into the hip-hop circuit for more than a decade now. Ever since he wrote a heated poem in defense of Pee-wee Herman. We spoke with the artist about everything from a Twenty One Pilots collab to old strippers. Here are 10 things you should know about Watsky. 1 / He Appreciates A Good Kebab Before a Show An artist’s work is never done, especially when he’s only getting ready to go on stage. That’s a perfect moment to breathe, relax and, you know, get an overseas phone call from Myspace. Given the circumstances, we felt obligated to kick off our chat with Watsky by asking about the rapping poet’s pre-show rituals. “We all went to get some kebab food before tonight’s show in Manchester; everyone was very hungry. But I don’t really have any specific rituals. I just try to relax and have fun.” 2 / He’s a Californian Hip-Hop Poet Just like many talented poets before him, this particular San Francisco-native started rhyming words in his bedroom when he was a teenager. Then he added social and political commentary into the mix and has been on a roll ever since, releasing albums, touring the country and

Watsky: The Hip Hop Poet

playing with words. “Poetry is a very big influence on my music. I used to do a lot of competitions and open mics for performance poetry when I was in high school.” 3 / He Appeared on ‘Russell Simmons’ Def Poetry’ Watsky’s big break came in 2007, when he appeared on the final season of HBO’s Russell Simmons’ Def Poetry, a spoken word poetry series. “I was 19 at the time and got to make some money off my art. I used that money to fund videos for my music, and that helped me to jump-start an internet following. Then around 2012 I managed to make a shift from playing these college venues to doing ticketed venues with a band.” 4 / He’ll Make You Pay Attention to His Lyrics While hip-hop always has a way of sneaking into young listeners’ hearts, poetry, on the other hand, usually needs an extra push to get noticed. How does Watsky make his fans listen instead of just nodding to the beats? “I think the nodding to the beats is the first way in. The people who really analyze the music will listen multiple times and will start to understand what you’re saying. People who come to my shows do want to understand lyrics. At the end of the day rap is poetry as well. Songwriting is poetry. I have a following of people who love wordplay, language, storytelling and really appreciate lyrics”. As any adventurous poet, he doesn’t like to repeat himself, but sometimes he accidentally does. “If there’s a rhyme that I’ve used already, I try not to do it again, but I still might do it accidentally. These little things that get stuck in my head and I forget that I’ve done multiple times. I think I’ve rhymed tourniquet with tournament in two differ-

10 Things You Should Know About Watsky

ent verses. I also try not to write about my family unless I have their permission.” Obviously we had to ask about his proudest poetic moment. “I’m proud of my song ‘4 AM Monday,’ where I said: ‘His flow is hole-y like the edge of abalone shells, I want to flow holy like matrimony bells I’m really proud of that because it had four-syllable multirhyme and it also had homophones: holy and hole-y.’ ” 5 / Watsky is His Real Name Unlike some of his finest verses, there’s hardly any mystery behind Watsky’s catchy stage name. “It’s just my last name. I’m George Watsky. Sometimes I’m going by my full name when I’m doing my poetry or putting a book out. My friends called me Watsky growing up in school so it stuck.” 6 / He Published a Collection of Essays Apparently Watsky likes to be the only one reading his verses out loud, since he hasn’t put out a proper poetry book in a decade.

“At the end of the day rap is poetry as well. Songwriting is poetry.” “I have only put out a printed poetry collection back in 2006 and I haven’t done one in over 10 years. I did put out a book this year that was a collection of essays called How to Ruin Everything. I’ll probably put out another poetry collection next year. It sort of got side-tracked by all the music that I’ve been doing.” His essays collection, though, has already became a New

Watsky: The Hip Hop Poet

York Times bestseller. “It’s comedic, in the style of David Sedaris, where it’s observational humor. It’s like my poetry and music: there’s serious stuff and there’s humor, but it goes from serious to funny stuff in a sentence or two. It’s 13 stories from my life. It’s not a memoir, just a collection of stories.” 7 / He’s Inspired by Multi-Talented Performers You can’t have a true artist without a detailed list of people who inspired him. “There are two poets who influenced me the most. The one who helped shaping my stage persona is Beau Sia. He’s got this incredible charisma on stage that I always admired. Very funny, very subversively funny, able to control his audience by making very small things like raising his eyebrow or moving his pinky. The other one is Saul Williams, who inspired me to pursue different media on multiple platforms. He’s an actor, a well-respected poet, had a music career. That made me believe that it was possible to have this multi-platform career and still have all of it, be very honest and true to yourself.” 8 / His First Poem Was Pro-Masturbation You always remember your first, right? Speaking of Watsky, his first was a short poem. “It was 90 seconds long, it was called ‘Beliefs.’ I was 15 years old. It was almost about nothing: I was rhyming and going back and forth, trying to come up with multi-rhymes. I think at the end I said something about how I believed that Pee-wee Herman shouldn’t have been arrested for masturbating in the public theater. That was the last line of the poem: ‘Pee-wee Herman is innocent, the fucking system’s broken.’”

10 Things You Should Know About Watsky

9 / X Infinity Features Twenty One Pilots’ Josh Dun X Infinity is Watsky’s fifth record and it came out in August. “It’s 18 tracks long, so if anyone wants to listen to it, it’s a commitment. It’s very orchestral — there’s a lot of live horns instruments arrangements on it, jazz influences, little something for everyone,” he explains. “It’s produced by Kush Mody. I’m very proud of it; there’s a mix of serious songs, funny songs, wordplay. It’s my most ambitious album yet — sort of a genre mash-up.” One of the collaborator was Twenty One Pilots’ drummer Josh Dun. “He hit me up on Twitter, we arranged the session and he came in, super nice guy, played on a few songs and ‘Midnight Heart’ made the cut.” Considering Watsky was a drummer in a jazz band when he was younger, did he ask Dun to teach him some cool drumming tricks? “I didn’t, but I’d love him to teach me how to do a backflip off the drum set, ‘cause I know he does that at his shows.” Josh, your turn. 10 / He Had 65-Year-Old Strippers at His Birthday This past September Watsky turned 30 and he did celebrate in style. “It was pretty crazy. I won’t go into too many details. But we did end up in Atlanta’s strip club called Clermont Lounge. It had non-traditionally beautiful older women, 65-year-old strippers. That was pretty wild.” Does he plan to be a decent gentleman and dedicate a poem to this wise stripper he met in Atlanta? “Maybe I get inspired when I get back home from tour.”

X Infinity Interview

by Chris Grenville | August 15, 2016

I read on a Reddit AMA last year that you sometimes like to look up brutally honest feedback from people who aren’t fans because you can learn from it. What’s the most important thing you’ve learned from something one of those people has said? That’s a serious question, let me think about that for a second. I think the first and foremost thing I’ve learned from reading people’s criticism is that I need to learn which ones to pay attention to and which ones to ignore, because a lot of the times I’ll get feedback that’s very consistent and if I’m hearing the same thing over and over again I really do listen to it. I try to take it seriously – but if it’s a rogue comment, or if I can tell it’s just someone trying to troll me or doesn’t understand what I’m going for then I really try and ignore it. But for instance, on two of my songs that have come out recently, people have posted that they think the audio mix is too low in my verses, and I’ve taken that seriously and I’ve gone back and made changes because of that; and it’s not because I’m lazy, it’s just because sometimes you don’t get it right the first time, and I’m trying. And in terms of my actual work…it’s tough to say. I think in terms of production that’s where I’ve listened to people the most,

Watsky: The Hip Hop Poet

because a lot of people that don’t like my work…they don’t like who I am or what I do isn’t what they’re looking for in hip-hop, and I can’t that too seriously because I run the risk of not being myself and just doing something because I’m worried that people won’t like it. On the other hand, what’s the nicest thing someone’s said to you recently?! I think any time anyone says that my music has inspired them to create their own music, it’s really great for me because I know I can point to the people who were my inspirations when I first started, and they’ll always have an extremely important place in my life. So there have been people recently who said listening to me got them started on writing, and that’s a huge compliment to me. Touching on that a little bit, when you inspire people – or at least in my case it was – it’s usually down to one song maybe. One of the songs that really resonated with me “Wounded Healer” – are there any songs on the new album that resonate with you emotionally on that kind of level, more than the other? There’s a song called “Chemical Angel” that’s third on my album, that doesn’t have the exact same feeling as “Wounded Healer“, but is a very simple and honest song in the same way that “Wounded Healer” has probably the fewest words

X Infinity Interview

in of any song that I’ve ever written, but it is one that I do hear from people – thank you for the nice words, by the way – that has resonated with people, and I think “Chemical Angel” might do something similar. It’s very honest, it’s very simple, and it’s one that I was able to get to the point very fast with it. Yeah, I definitely picked up on that; it’s one that immediately jumped out at me. “Chemical Angel” is about my feelings about trying to get off of the medication that I’m on for my epilepsy, and trying to quit because I’m on a medication that I really don’t like being on, and it’s about that struggle of trying to get off my medication. You say in it: “if I had to choose, I’d rather lose my life than have to lose myself”. What does do the medication do to you that makes you feel not yourself? It messes up my memory. It makes me feel stupid. It flattens out my brain waves so it makes me feel like a zombie, and it’s basically robbing my personality from me, and what could be more important than the person you actually are? It’s like, it’s a very terrifying thought, to think that I’m just gonna walk through the world as a cheapened version of the person that I always thought that I was. That makes a lot of sense; I think I

Watsky: The Hip Hop Poet

would definitely be the same! Is there anything you feel that x Infinity offers that maybe your previous records don’t – maybe to a new listener, or…? Yeah…I think that it’s more mature, and I think that it’s better, but that’s a very subjective opinion, and of course I have to feel that way about my new work, but I really do! I really honestly do. I think that what it has is the same core philosophy as Cardboard Castles and All You Can Do, but with a slightly tweaked perspective on it, and I think the way that’s it’s tweaked it that it takes all the existential angst that Cardboard Castles has but looks at it from a different direction, and basically says “if we are meaningless in the world, that can actually be a very freeing idea”. So I think it’s a joyful album, and it’s one that is at its core – even though it’s sort of fatalistic – is also optimistic, and it’s a celebratory album, whereas All You Can Do was me coming to terms with the less-flattering sides of myself, and so it was sort of a darker album, and Cardboard Castles on the other hand was a very sunny album – and this one I think is an album that has joy at its core, but isn’t so emotionally simple as Cardboard Castles. Is there anything in particular that changed your perspective since then? I’ve just grown up! I’ve had successes

X Infinity Interview

and I’ve had failures, and I think that combination of knowing that you can succeed and maybe having the confidence to know that if I put good work out there it’s gonna do well has made me a more confident person, but also failing and fucking up has made me a more humble person, and so at least I hope that that’s just matured me; just the process of living. So, I’ve gotta say that there are some rhymes and word-plays on the album that have really jumped out at me. Being a writer too, those kinds of think jump out, like the “your butt makes me cry, I call it a boo-hooty”. Have you got a favourite rhyme or word-play from the new album? I do love that one! And actually, every time I come up with a pun that I think is really clever I type it into Google to make sure that I was the first one to do it. And half the time Donald Glover did it first… And that one I was really happy that I got to it first, because I hate it when find out a rapper recycled a line that I love from someone else, and I try to never do that. The other line that’s on that song, “Don’t Be Nice“, that I’m really proud of – it ends the whole verse. That song is such a gratuitous… it’s like a two-and-a-half minute verse followed by an extended jazz outro. Just

Watsky: The Hip Hop Poet

like, pure word-play porn, and the last in is…let’s see how it all goes. It says “if you got a new Coupe, I do not knock

“So yeah, I’m not cut out to play a part in Hamilton, but I am cut out to be an audience member and to enjoy it.” it, but I bukkake your Bugatti with snot rockets”, and I was really rhyming “bukkake” and “Bugatti”, and then finding a way to make it make sense with the verse, and it’s the last one; it’s the last line of the verse too, and then it goes into the jazz outro, so I’m particularly proud of that disgusting image. (laughs) There’s so much going on in that track, it’s really good. So, Daveed Diggs is on the last track, and obviously Lin-Manuel is on your book cover. Which part in Hamilton would you like to play? Well, I could never play a part in Hamilton unfortunately, because the only part that I think is appropriate for a white dude to play is King George, and I’m not a good enough singer to play King George; those songs require someone to have a really excellent voice. I know there’s a lot of debate around whether they should expand the casting in Hamilton to be colour-blind; I personally think the play would not resonate unless it was actors of colour playing all the revolutionary forefathers. So yeah, I’m

X Infinity Interview

not cut out to play a part in Hamilton, but I am cut out to be an audience member and to enjoy it. Have you been to see it? I have! Yeah, I loved it. So of in it

jealous! (laughs) Okay, this is a bit a weird one: if you could play a gig any fictional location, where would be and why?

A fictional location? Yeah. I would love to go to Hogwarts. That would be pretty cool. (laughs) Who do you think would like your stuff the most; which house? Probably Ravenclaw; pretty nerdy. But I know that Daniel Radcliffe likes wordy rap music since he did “Alphabet Aerobics” from Blackalicious [on The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon] so… Oh, no way! Yeah, he did a big viral cover of that, and Gift of Gab from Blackalicious is one of the MCs I grew up listening to so…I know he’s not interchangeable with his character, but you know, maybe he’d come to the show too!

Watsky: The Hip Hop Poet

That’s awesome! So you’re giving away your Subaru? Yeah! I guess this question is two-fold: why are you giving it away, and what are you gonna replace it with? Well, I’ll answer the second part first: I’m not gonna replace it with anything. I’m not gonna have a car for a while; I don’t need one, and I love the Subaru but I love the way that I’ve been travelling the world recently and just being able to move around every month to a new place, and having a car doesn’t really make sense for that. The reason that I’m getting rid of it is because of that! I don’t need it any more; my lifestyle does not require having a car and I figured if I was just lending it out to friends every six months – and they were just driving it for me – I might as well give it away and give it to someone who would love it, and I felt like it was a real…just, perfect button on a certain chapter in my life. It represented all this music that I’d done before, and I loved the idea of turning the page, and I’m maturing, my music’s maturing, that car has been in so many of my videos, and I figured why not fix it up and give it to someone who needs it? I actually picked a winner last night–

X Infinity Interview

Oh really? –Yeah! And I talked to them, and what I did was I put all the entries from the contest in an Excel spreadsheet, and there was two thousand of them. Then I went to random.org – it’s a website that’s capable of generating a random integer between a field that you enter. So I wanted one random integer between 1 and 1,957, and all I did was I clicked a button once to generate one random integer, and that integer corresponded to the row the winner was in of the Excel spreadsheet. It’s a woman named Sarah, she lives in Ithaca, New York, and I called her last night and she doesn’t own a car, and she needs a car; it’s really perfect. She’s a doctoral medical student at Cornell College and I get to give someone a car who needs one. It’s really awesome! That’s fantastic man! Is it far from the last state of your tour? Well I’m leaving on Monday; I’m going on the road trip before my tour. Ithaca is about as far from Los Angeles as it could possibly be; it’s basically…if you look at the United States, it’s like running a diagonal from the lower left-hand corner to the upper right-hand corner, so it’s more than three thousand miles which is far it is from San Francisco to New York; it’s like thirty five hundred

Watsky: The Hip Hop Poet

miles or something. I can’t wait! I’m actually really excited that the winner wasn’t right around the corner from me. Are you taking anyone with you? I’m gonna take a videographer, and then one other person – to be decided… You talked about it being in a lot of your videos; what’s your favourite video of all the ones you’ve made? Any of the new ones? Maybe! I really love “Midnight Heart“; it’s so crazy – the boxing choreography. It’s probably between that one and “Whoah Whoah Whoah“. When I was watching the ”Midnight Heart” one I was thinking of “Fuck An Emcee Name“, but it’s so much more – all the dancing around that you do. It was very intentional; every moment in it – and unlike “Emcee Name” where we went in a boxing ring and just messed around, with this one everything was done with intention. I’m really trying to raises the bar with all my videos and make sure that every single one of them is very…that’s there’s care and craft put into every one of them. Are you doing a video for every song this time? Correct me if I’m wrong but you’ve done videos for most of your songs? I’ve always tried and then I’ve lost

X Infinity Interview

interest and money when the album cycle’s wound down, but I really really wanna do a video for every song – it’s just gonna be incredibly expensive to do, at least to the level that I’ve been doing videos. So I’m trying to get in two more before…I have three more videos that have been shot that haven’t been released yet – for “Stick To Your Guns“, “Brave New World” and “Little Slice” – and I’m gonna try and do videos for “Don’t Be Nice” and “Pink Lemonade” before I go on the road. Then when I get back I’d like to try and do the rest of them but it’s…I’m gonna need money and the thing thing that I’m trying to do is put these little Easter eggs around all my videos so that there’s visual themes and motifs and transitions between them. This may not be something

“I’m really trying to raises the bar with all my videos and make sure that every single one of them is very… there’s care and craft put into every one of them.” most people notice, but when the “Tiny Glowing Screens Part 3” ends, it ends on a shot of my back, and when the “Talking To Myself” video starts, it starts on the shot of the dancer’s back and it’s framed in the exact same way as the previous one ends on my back, and that goes with two songs that follow each

Watsky: The Hip Hop Poet

other directly on the album. What I’m trying to do with all my videos, even though I’m shooting them out of order, is look at the transitions so that if I were to eventually finish all my videos, you could watch them – the album videos – from start to finish with smooth transitions and motifs between all of them. That’s a level detail that I don’t think a lot of people put into their work, and I think that’s what, for me anyway, makes you so special. Thank you – well I’m trying! And I hope that people…there will be all these little Easter eggs planted around the videos that I think people will notice afterwards and be like “ohhhhhh wow!” It’s really fun for me to do that. I’m gonna have to go and look! Alright, so just to wrap up: obviously you’re heading out on tour. You’re doing America, then over to Europe. I was at your show, it wasn’t your first London show, but it was one of them – The Old Vic Tunnels? Oh wow! Cool. It was literally about two months after I found out about you. You said there that playing to a crowd of that size was overwhelming – I’d imagine you play to much bigger crowds now. Are you more used to it now, or does it still blow your mind a little bit?

X Infinity Interview

I’m more used to it, but it’s something that…it never gets old for me, because I spent so long playing to very small crowds, and when you spend six or seven years playing to fifteen people, and then suddenly you’re able to play to hundreds and thousands of people, you never forget how grateful you are to get to that point – and how easily it could have never happened. So it’s amazing, and every time I go out on the road I appreciate it, and especially this time because we haven’t been touring for about a year and a half. I am so so excited to get out there.

nothing lives unless it breathes 64

Lovely Thing Suite: Knots Watsky | X Infinity (2016) What a tangle What a strangling knot to be caught in To be exiled here To be stuck in Berlin with Vienna so near Yet so far from the Emperorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ear What a strange and impossible sum To be old while to still be so young To have sung before speaking a word To be heard To be hailed Then to fail To be done To love but to be so naive To trust and to be so deceived To mourn Forlorn To be torn from you Scorned for another Who suffers no grief To curse God, seeking lightning And to still be ignored To hide in this room Now too rich to aďŹ&#x20AC;ord To hear armies of creditors bang at the door Always yelling for more And to have nothing to sell that could help Except for the Steinway that sits in the corner

Watsky: The Hip Hop Poet

For Arthur it all came too easily To learn the scales in every key To play the etudes and the suites The nocturnes and The Fantaisie To master the sonatas, minuets, and symphonies To seek the truth fits and starts To strike the middle F like it’s an arrow through the heart To wing the right hand like a dove The peaceful flutter of a dove And with left a violent shove Some moments will demand a shove To needle gently yet relentless with a steady foot upon the pedal And to clench the iron first inside the velvet glove To learn to whisper and to scream The whisper justifies the scream To let each yearning finger breathe No, nothing lives unless it breathes To burn, To worship, To mislead To pose a question with a pinky on a key To flee, To fight, To bleed To float in air Nothing solid underneath To rap those heavy knuckles on the gate to heaven til there’s nothing to achieve, but—

Lovely Thing Suite: Knots

To go retrieve the length of cable hidden in the cabinet To metamorphasize the twisted rope unto an alphabet To lay the lazy C upon the shabby wooden floor to rest To send the end across the top and bend the C into an S To curve the tail beneath the S to turn the tangle to a B To hug the wretched root around the fibers suffocatingly To wrap again to wrap again to give the coil seven loops To penetrate the yawning hoop To tug the loose appendage through To yank the knot until it’s ready for the job it’s got to do To toss the braid above the ceiling beam and to aﬃx the noose To bid adieu to all of you until there’s nothing left to do but Climb the chair To cinch the collar Find the edge To step into the air

Ask Me Anything Interview

AMA on Reddit | August 12, 2014

apostleman Watsky! How do you handle criticism? When people say your music is lame or corny, what helps you shrug that off? Also come back to Albany with Wax, we loved you guys! I gotta admit I occasionally lurk on /r/ HipHopHeads to see what brutally honest non-fans say about my shit. I think it’s good to do that because the other side of the coin is only listening to the opinions of fans who love my material and are going to stroke my ego. And I can’t get better if I’m only listening to the opinions of people who think my music is perfect (it’s not). I have the luxury of getting positive reinforcement about my work all the time, so I like to see what people who think I suck have to say. Sometimes they articulate what they don’t like about me really well, and if I take that with a grain of salt, I can learn from it. Yokimori29 If you could have a rap battle with any fictional character who would it be? God.

Watsky: The Hip Hop Poet

shmleddit Hey Watsky thanks for doing this again. I was wondering if a specific event made you write Wounded Healer? My dad isn’t very healthy and that song always gives me goosebumps because I’m always worrying about his health. My dad’s best friend committed suicide a couple years ago. Both he and my dad are/ were psychotherapists (specifically Jungian analysts) and committing suicide is a major taboo for therapists with active clients. So it was especially confusing and heartbreaking for my dad. Carl Jung (i.e. Jungian) has a plank of his theory about being a “Wounded Healer,” which means that the therapist brings their own experiences and trauma into their relationship with a patient, and uses that to help inform their advice and empathy. I wrote the song about that experience paired with seeing my dad, who I love a lot, get older. lederwrangler I’m not familiar with the material on your new album yet, but would you ever want to release an exclusively spoken word/poetry album? Tiny Glowing Screens Pt 2 was my favorite track on Cardboard Castles. Right on, the song “cannonball” on the new album is similar to that. I’m sure I’ll do another exclusively poetry project at some point. Either a printed col-

Ask Me Anything Interview

lection or a record, but I feel like of all the things I love to do, music may be the one that values youth the most, so I’m trying to take advantage of the opportunity while I can. I hope to be writing as long as i’m breathing. janinehogan How did you deal with your early shows’ lighting with your epilepsy? Did it make you unable to do a lot of performances? I don’t have epilepsy that’s triggered by flashing lights. Many epileptics have no problems with lights, and all have different triggers. I have a mild case (I’ve had 4 gran mal seizures, separated in the middle by 14 years) and my trigger seems to be aerobic exercise/ long distance running. Some people are triggered by stress, dehydration, lack of sleep, alcohol, a combination of all those things, or nothing in particular. My seizures came back recently and it was a concern that a really intense stage show on Warped Tour in the sun all summer could be a problem. So I forfeited by driver’s license, stopped drinking and I’ve stayed on a medication I don’t particularly want to be on for the time being. More seizures could really throw my touring plans off, which would be a blow not just to myself, but to the whole crew I tour with, so I’m trying to play it safe and take good care of myself.

Watsky: The Hip Hop Poet

TheJokerMD If you could go the rest of your life without either your dominant hand OR your thumbs, which would you be willing to lose? I’d say lose the dominant hand. I feel like I could relearn to use my left for a lot but take away opposable thumbs and I’d be pretty screwed. candleboy95 I’m huge fan of yours and Epic Rap Battles of History. I love when you’re on and as a Whovian I especially loved you as the 4th Doctor. So my questions are: What is the whole experience of working with EpicLLOYD and Nice Peter like? And do you guys collab on the lyrics, do you write them or just perform what they write? I love working with those guys. They actually let me write my own verses, much like Zach Sherwin does. It would be hard for me to rap something someone else wrote, because the delivery and the writing go hand in hand with each other. Zach pitched some of the punchlines that made it into the Poe one, and I was also in the writers’ room pitching for the Dr. Who episode.

“

Ask Me Anything Interview

I hope to be writing as long as I’m breathing.

”

â&#x20AC;&#x153;

Watsky: The Hip Hop Poet

I feel like of all the things I love to do, music may be the one that values youth the most.

Ask Me Anything Interview

nuodaispalis Hi Watsky, I’m Danielle. I’ve seen you multiple times, the first time being in Lyndonville, VT. I try to bring something special to each of your shows (cupcakes or handmade crafts) to give to you, and when I saw you at Warped you remembered my name :] What do you do with the gifts that your fans give to you? Do you have any favorites? I try to keep all of them unless they’re physically too big to bring with us. I have a couple boxes of em and they make me really happy. A fan in upstate New York gave me a binder on Warped Tour of memories she collected from a bunch of other fans that really touched me. I also got an oak tree made out of colored wires in Germany last year that was really amazing. stubby43 I saw you at your first show in London, it was absolutely amazing easily the best show I’ve ever been to, looking forward to seeing you in manchester. On to the question, as someone who’s built their fame by releasing videos and giving out mix tapes for free do you think the album is dead or is there still a place for it? I believe in albums, because I like a piece of work that’s more substantial

Watsky: The Hip Hop Poet

than a single song as a representation of where an artist is in their life. I studied theater and I view an album like a play or a movie, in terms of giving it a structural backbone from song to song. Three act structure (aka beginning, middle, end) can be a really helpful way to look at building an album. You want to take people on an emotional trip. It has to lead somewhere and I really enjoy the process of building a project that way. In terms of physical albums, I think people will always find creative ways to have a tactile representation of an album, but CDs are pretty much obsolete already. I think sculptures that incorporate USB keys in creative ways could be a cool way to package a project. Wheatley707 Hey George youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re an amazing person and just great at what you do but I have a very serious question: Favorite dipping sauce? Gyoza sauce. Steve_Gomie What the hell is gyoza? Someone take this man to a japanese restaurant asap. Steve_Gomie What roll is good for gyoza sauce? Gyoza.

Ask Me Anything Interview

flaminpenguins How would you describe colors to a blind person? (you’re super eloquent so i’d like to see you answer this because i have no idea!) Huge fan btw! Love all of your poetry, music and general dislike of the Dodgers. Maybe I would describe it spacially? Since colors aren’t linear, it would be hard to say it in terms of binaries (hot/cold loud/quiet). If music had a shape to it? That’s a tough one. Rubbertoe21 Hey Watsky, being a musician have you ever felt upset or disappointed when you put a lot of hours into a song or poem, and it doesn’t turn out the way you wanted it? How do you deal with it? Also man, you have to promise that you won’t let ubiquity damage your quality! Have a great day! You’re awesome, and I hope I get the chance to watch you when you come to Lawrence! I have material that doesn’t turn out how I expected all the time. Rarely does a project happen exactly the way I want. But my personal philosophy is that I would rather release potentially flawed material that I worked really hard on than constantly pick apart potential

Watsky: The Hip Hop Poet

problems with my work and never put it out. I know tons of artists who sit on projects until they’re too old to release because of that fear. It’s a fine line-sometimes you have to know when a piece isn’t up to your standards and scrap it, but make sure that isn’t just a nagging voice of self-doubt trying to keep you from getting your work out there. MinecraftHardon What is your favorite pokemon? DITTO, he can become anyone. Cop out answer, I know. such_a_tommy_move What is your favorite munchie food? Nachos, Flamin hot cheetos, Cheese fries. Idle-HandsI have to say Watsky, when I first heard your music, I was pretty much stunned at your speed (Pale Kid Raps Fast) and at that time it seemed like somewhat of a gimmick. Obviously as I listened more and more to your music I became quickly drawn in by your lyrics and the meanings and depth behind each one. Safe to say I’m a huge fan (along with my brother and sister), already bought the album and I’m looking forward to seeing you in London in September! Now on to my question: As I am a hopeful musician studying at University and making my own stuff only recently,

Ask Me Anything Interview

what would be your writing process when starting a new song and how would you go about getting your music out to a bigger audience? It’s a combination of hard work, natural skill and good fortune. The only part of that equation you can control is hard work, although you have to work smart, and if you do, then skill can be improved. I really think when you’re starting out it’s good to take every opportunity to learn, meet likeminded folks, and expose your work. Raise your hand every time, sign up for every open mic, and don’t get discouraged if it doesn’t work out at first. Use the internet to your advantage and enjoy the process of writing and performing regardless of how many people are at the show. Easier said than done, but that’s the best I got. freshpairofeyes Hey All it? how

Watsky! I really like the cover for You Can Do. What is the idea behind Also, who is the photographer and did you meet? :)

That’s an honest-to-goodness photo of my dad that his girlfriend at the time took in 1971 when he was my age (27). The back cover is a picture of my mom from the same year. The album is a tribute to them in some ways and the era of music they grew up with and passed on to me. My folks both moved to San Francisco in

Watsky: The Hip Hop Poet

the late 60s and I wanted to write an album that explored what it means to be raised by the hippy generation. TheMandrigald Hey George! Will there ever be another “Watsky’s Making An Album” type series on WatchLOUD? I loved both of them and would be thrilled to see another one. Thanks. Some day I’d love to. I studied acting and screenwriting in school so doing narrative work is something I want to do with my life. At some point my knees will give out and I won’t be able to rap for my meals. baronspeerzy Who is your biggest idol that you have had a chance to meet and is aware of your work? What did they say? And who is your biggest idol you’ve yet to meet and converse with as a peer? I got to re-meet Gift of Gab from Blackalicious in Santa Cruz several years after he recorded a guest verse on my song Everything Turns Gold. It was really awesome that he remembered me and had been following me career. He’s seriously an idol- one of my top 5 MCs and that was a real honor. CaptainNirvana Hey Watsky, huge fan. Loved all your music, loved your collab with The Get

Ask Me Anything Interview

Band. I’ve been loving the singles off of All You Can Do. I really only have one question: was the video for Whoa Whoa Whoa influenced by Dizzee Rascal’s vid I Don’t Need a Reason? Looking forward to getting your new album man. Thanks for the AMA. We saw that video when we were already in production for Whoa Whoa Whoa and were a little bummed that we didn’t get to that concept first. Ours was a bit different since it was GIFs that start out from the beginning over and over again rather than a circular motion, but that was an extremely cool video. slightly666 Hey, my son is a huge fan and listens to you everyday! He found an address online to send fan mail but had it returned undeliverable, address unknown. He was super bummed. Anyway, do you happen to have an updated address I could throw him? Haha he’d be hella psyched if he saw this. Thanks! I’m not sure why it came back. I still have a PO box address that’s active, although I fell way behind on responding to letters when I was on Warped Tour for 2 months. It’s: 1920 Hillhurst Ave Box 113, Los Angeles, CA, 90027

Watsky: The Hip Hop Poet

oceankta George, sup! My question is: in your song Grass is Greener you talk about a girl being really sick and in a hospital. Have you had any experiences that inspired that song? It hit close to home for me and I’d like to know more about the back story if there’s one. Also I wanna say thanks for trying hard to communicate with your fans. I almost died when you tweeted me happy birthday. Congrats on your album! Much love. It’s about a good friend of mine from high school with an immune disorder and how myself, her and her boyfriend all have different positive things in our lives that we take for granted but that one of the other two people is desperate for. Shouldbeworking22 What did your parents say when you told them you wanted to become a rapper? I think it was probably a wink and a pat on the head at first. “sure son, good luck with that.” But they’ve always been supportive, and as soon as they saw I was working hard and there was a glimmer of hope, they’ve been on board.

Ask Me Anything Interview

horsefly52 Can we expect any sort of collaboration with Bo Burnham as a single or on a new album? Not on this album, but I have a feeling we will do something when the time is right. imgonnacallyouretard What were you thinking when you did that 35 foot stage dive that injured two people? Are you going to jump on me if I come to one of your shows? It was obviously very stupid, that goes without saying. Believe it or not, I thought the audience would catch me. I vastly underestimated how high the riser was and vastly overestimated the audienceâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s desire to do the catching. It was driven by ego and wanting to feel badass, when in fact it was the opposite and I wish I could have that choice back. I started taking dangerous risks on stage and because I was getting away with them for a while-- I pushed the envelope way too far and a couple of innocent people paid the price. It was humiliating, and Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m sure will continue to be something I have to answer to, but all I can do is try and learn from it, be a more responsible performer, and do what I can to make it right with the folks who got hurt.

Watsky: The Hip Hop Poet

NotSoOrdinaryGamer If you could write a TV show, what would it be about? I wrote a sick Futurama spec about how Fry goes to Dublin (which is called Triplin in the future) and is hailed as the messiah because recessive genes have bred orange hair out of the Irish population. MaxIsNotADolphin If you could open for anyone/have anyone open for you, who would it be? Open for Outkast. Donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know about openers for me, Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve had some awesome ones.

â&#x20AC;&#x153;

Ask Me Anything Interview

The only part of that equation you can control is hard work, although you have to work smart, and if you do, then skill can be improved. 85

George Watsky

George Watsky is a rapper, writer and performer from San Francisco now living in Los Angeles. A versatile lyricist who switches between silly and serious, technically complex and simply heartfelt, George won the Brave New Voices National Poetry Slam in 2006. Immediate after, George appeared on the final season of Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry in 2007 while a himself college Freshman and subsequently performed at over 150 universities across the country. In January 2011 George’s fast rapping went viral and led to two appearances on the Ellen Show, a slot on Last Call with Carson Daly, and an exploding online profile. George has performed at the Just for Laughs festival in Montreal, the NAACP Image Awards on FOX, three times at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, and has been featured in XXL, Billboard Magazine, the New York Times Magazine. Watsky’s social media presence made him one of only 23 artists dubbed by ‘The Next Big Sound’ as a ‘Big Sound of 2011,’ alongside Mac Miller, Kreayshawn and Skrillex. George graduated from Emerson College with a B.A. in “Writing and Acting for the Screen and Stage.”

- Don’t fall asleep yet. Contrary to popular belief, that’s not where dreams get accomplished. - There are 7 billion 47 million people on the planet. And I have the audacity to think I matter. I know it’s a lie but I prefer it to the alternative. - I can’t tell if I’m a good person or I’m faking really well. - I’m not Jesus Christ but I can turn water into Kool-Aid. - My heart is a colored pencil but my brain is an eraser. - I don’t believe in Hell, but I believe in my parents’ couch. - I just figured out my first tattoo was going to be of bug bites. Decided I’d commemorate their bloody drink by printing three circles on my ankle, perfect and pink in permanent ink. - This life’s our greatest project, the journey’s all an art. - I ate dirt as a baby, I did it for the flavor. In a couple years, I’ll let the dirt return the favor. - Together is not a strong enough word for the opposite of alone. - We’re every age at once and tucked inside ourselves like Russian nesting dolls. - I’m so far from perfect, but so far it’s been worth it. - Smiles are delinquant teenagers. They like to gather in large groups. This nights smells like no other ever had or ever quite will, so don’t hold your nose when you walk past me. - No frozen dinners and no TV. And is that a world we want to text in? Even when the sprinklers cried on us we didn’t mind. We had the rest of our lives to be dry. - Cause even though my bank account is low or overdrawn, I’m down to mow your lawn. - Nothing I can’t solve with duct tape and construction paper. - One day you opened up your eyes, inside of you, inside a world, inside a universe you didn’t get to choose. - George Watsky