I got the chance to speak with George Watsky, 27 year old genius rapper who is on the Vans Warped Tour this year. I caught him backstage and shook off the bit of nervousness I had (being a huge fan), and we got started.
It was a natural conversation that got us to start talking- he saw I was wearing a WATSKY bracelet I picked up at his merch tent, and I had told him it was because he doesn’t have any merch on his website. He said that was one thing he was working on for the upcoming “club tour.”
“We start our club tour in September. We’re starting in Europe, touring the US in October/November, Australia in December. We’re not announcing dates until Warped Tour ends. But we’re gonna do a full sweep around the country.”
“It was a long process,” he says, in regards to making his upcoming album. “We took a five month hiatus after our last tour last fall. I started writing material while we were on the road. I had two or three months to write it, started doing a jam session process, and me and three other musicians would get together in my garage and we’d jam on beats. The whole album, unlike most hip hop albums, doesn’t have any samples on it. It’s built from the ground up, kind of like a rock album where we figure out what chord progression we want to use, tempo, track arrangement. I then wrote to those raw ideas, knowing what the tempo would be, write the hooks and lyrics, then we did a two week studio session where we rerecorded everything knowing what we wanted to shape it like. We weren’t wasting time (paying for studio time). It takes a long time for me to write.”
Bo Burnham is in his video for his new song “Whoa Whoa Whoa”- I asked him how they met. “I met Bo on a plane in 2011. I saw him sitting in first class and I was headed back to coach and was like, ‘Hey man I’m a big fan of yours.’ Then I met him on the curb again waiting for rides afterwards. Then a week later I had a popular video posted by Reddit and Bo is a Redditor and he connected the dots that I was the guy he met on the plane. Since then we were aware of each other. Every now and then we grab a beer and hang out. We’d like to do a song together at some point, too.”
As soon as I mentioned that he’s been referred to as “the voice of a generation”, he did a full body cringe. “I don’t know who called me that that could be anyone. Anyone on the internet could say things good or bad. I try not to take the bad too seriously, nor the hyperbolic good. It’s awesome if someone feels that way. Even if the New York Times said that I don’t think I could start getting myself to believe that I am a voice. That’s for other people to figure out. I’m just trying to write good music.”
“We’ve had amazing crowds (at Warped so far),” he reflects. “We’ve had packed capacities every time. It’s a combination of fans and people hearing us for the first time so it’s exactly what we wanted. The reception’s been great, no one’s been throwing tomatoes at us.”
The three words he used to describe himself were, “Skinny. San Franciscan. Linguaphile.” I’d say that’s pretty damn accurate. His guilty pleasure music? “I shamelessly have Mariah Carrey on my iTunes.”
The humble, kind, talented man just affirmed my respect and admiration for him and his work. Be sure to catch Watsky on his US tour in the fall.
