The Daily Cardinal caught up with George Watsky to discuss his tour, newly released album and the YouTube video that made him famous.
Watsky first burst onto the rap scene by posting a video of himself rhyming on YouTube, accurately and self-deprecatingly titled “Pale Kid Raps Fast.” The video, posted in January of 2011, is 88 seconds long and has accumulated over 24 million views. “Pale Kid Raps Fast” blew up and landed Watsky on the Ellen DeGeneres show.
“It was really trippy because all of a sudden I was getting labeled, like, ‘fastest rapper,’ this thing that I never put any thought into trying to be. But suddenly I was it,” Watsky said. “Or at least that’s what some people said …To have people challenging me to be faster when I didn’t even care about being the fastest to begin with was a strange feeling.”
Although most of his fans know him for his music, Watsky first got involved with the art of rhyming by entering slam poetry contests. Eventually, Wastky would go on to win several awards for his poems.
“I got involved as a freshman in high school, right after I started seeing ‘Def Jam Poetry’ on HBO,” Watsky said. “I fell in love with the art form. I started doing open mics and competitions and I never stopped.”
Aside from four mix tapes, Watsky has released three studio albums, the newest of which, Cardboard Castles, was released in early March. It reached the number-one spot on iTunes’s hip-hop chart and number nine on the all-genres chart. Though he draws influence from Eminem, Andre 3000, Jurassic 5, Ludacris and other rappers, Watsky’s production is extremely unique. The sound of his music is ever changing. Background music ranges from woodwinds to banjo, from guitar to the piano. Other songs still feature more classic hip-hop beats.
“The bluegrass one came about from listening to banjo picking in 16th notes, which is almost the exact same cadence as the Busta Rhymes style of fast rap, so I thought it would be fun to pair up banjo picking with fast rap. I hadn’t really heard it done before,” Watsky said. “And just in general I try to keep entertaining myself. If I get bored with a style or a project, it’s probably time to take a risk and try something new. That bluegrass album didn’t blow up or go to the top of the charts or anything, but it was fun for me.”
Lyrically, Watsky’s music discusses social issues such as politics and teenage emotion, speaking to a generation of awkward high school kids. In his song “Stupidass,” off of his 2009 self-titled album, he raps about his schoolyard playground.
“I just try to write lyrics that are true to my life, like, I think it just came from the idea of Kanye [West’s] lyric ‘Everything I’m not made me everything I am,’ I wish I’d written that,” Watksy said. “You take your weaknesses and you turn them into your strengths. The things people make fun of you for, if you claim them as things that you’re proud of then the people insulting you lose all their power.”
A 2010 graduate of Emerson College, Watsky was able to manage his rising fame while still going to school.
“I didn’t really consider dropping out because I was doing a lot of college gigging, playing other colleges while I was in school, and I was always able to balance it with my classes,” Watsky said. “I took these really long Mondays and Wednesdays when I was a junior and a senior and I would leave Thursday, Friday and Saturday and go play college campuses then come back for class. I was able to balance it, like, I never felt like I had too much demand. If I got to that point, I probably would have thought about it. But my hopes for the future of my career include the things I studied in college, so I’m really glad I was able to finish with acting and screenwriting.”
Watsky is in the middle of his 50-stop Cardboard Castles tour across America, but still never fails to remember his roots in slam poetry.
“This is great that I’m getting all this exposure, but at the same time ‘Hey, guys, I write slow poems too.’ There are other things that I want people to know that I do,” Watsky said. “I’m not Eminem, I’m never going to be Eminem or Ludacris or Jay-Z. It’s what I have in my own personal experience that will make me unique and different, you know, instead of trying to be those other people.”
Catch Watsky at the High Noon Saloon April 11 at 8 p.m.
