Ear Biscuits with Rhett & Link - Ep. 46 Watsky- Ear Biscuits

Episode Date: August 22, 2014

Award winning slam-poet turned rapper, George Watsky, sits down with Rhett & Link this week to talk about what was behind his controversial 35 ft. stage dive in late 2013, his recent struggle with epilepsy, how he maintains authenticity in his lyrics and online persona, and why he's making waves in the hip hop industry with the release of his new album "All You Can Do." *NOTE: This conversation contains adult themes and language. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This is Mythical. Welcome to Ear Biscuits. I'm Rhett. And I'm Link. This week at the round table of dim lighting we have George Watsky, award winning slam poet and rapper. He's been climbing the charts both with the release of his new album All You Can Do and his ever growing YouTube channel Watsky! Yes, George's first claim to fame was being featured on Russell Simmons Presents Deaf Poetry on HBO.

This was back when he was 19 in 2006. And more recently, you might have seen him featured in one or two epic rap battles of history as Shakespeare or Edgar Allan Poe. Watsky's breakout viral video, I remember seeing it at the time, blew my mind. It was titled then, Pale Kid Raps Fast. He was speed rapping over an instrumental from Busta Rhymes' song, Break Ya Neck.

He posted that in January of 2011, and it currently has over 25 million views. So he's pretty amazing. That's a little fast. It's just, it's a little faster than I've ever spoken or thought. The words are subtitled on the screen and I still can't keep up. It's mesmerizing. You know, so one of the things we talk about is as an artist, kind of dealing with the fact that being pigeonholed is that because it went so viral. So it was good to kind of pick his brain about some piece of viral marketing

that he created himself going too well and then having to kind of spend the next year getting out from under that. And he's done that by continuing to make ways in the hip hop industry, releasing albums like his most recent, All You Can Do, released August 12th. 2014, it's already topped the hip hop and rap charts. The first video released was Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, posted in June. It's got over 2.5 million views and

features comedian Bo Burnham. Every time I get a beat, I know I gotta beat it up. I bend it, then I break it, then I chop it, then I eat it up. I peed up with never a brew. With the way I've been treating the music, I bleed it, I bruise it, I kick it to the curb, and then I'm slipping in my rubber, and I be freaking it, doing it, keeping it moving. I'm picking apart the muscle when I'm thinking about the hustle, but I'm nice. Nice! Whoa, whoa, whoa.

What do you take us for? Whoa, whoa, whoa. What do you take us for? So this one's got some cool effects that we talked to Watsky about. We also figure out what the song says about him. I expected him to be a very honest and introspective person because that comes through in so many of his lyrics.

We hit on a bunch of topics, authenticity, a number of things. You can catch the air biscuit now, but I wanted to say you can catch Watsky on tour this fall, starting in Europe and then making his way back to the States. He may even be stopping in India, is what he told us. I think he's trying to work that. Australia. He's going all over the place to promote this thing.

So you should go check it out. So we talked to Watsky about his ongoing battle with epilepsy, his controversial 35-foot stage dive in London that left two fans and himself injured. And we get into the mechanics of rapping as fast as he does. Yeah, so stick around for that as well. Here it is, a great conversation, very introspective, very honest Ear Biscuit with Watsky. Your CD is 3D.

Yeah. Thanks for gifting us a couple. Thank you for taking them. And we'll make you sign these when you sign the table, as I've already told you. Yeah, yeah. Were you like, I'm going to make a CD, but it has to be 3D? How did that happen? Well, you can already see that the little corner is popping up on it.

So for those of you who are listening, which is everybody, and can't see the CDs that are being held right now, there's a die cut on the front. My name is like cut out on the deluxe packaging, but the problem is it's not glued down, so the little corners at the end of the W will pop up and make it real. Well, that makes it real.

It's a nice feature. Yeah, I guess. I mean, if we had, you know, everything at our fingertips, we'd glue it down, but, you know, budget's tight these days. But anyway... had, you know, everything at our fingertips, we'd glue it down. But, you know, budget's tight these days. But anyway. Well, if we had glue at our fingertips, we'd glue it down. Yeah. But that's the first thing that people.

Then your fingertips would get stuck together. That's the first thing that people can do. Yeah. You know, just take a little dollop of Elmer's or I like Super Glue because it's fast. It's a participatory album. You have to actually finish the packaging yourself. You fix it right when you get it. Well, I mean, you do have to give people a sense of, I'm glad I got this physical thing,

because, I mean, in this age, you have to really justify people getting the physical thing. Absolutely. I mean, CDs are already obsolete, so if people buy it at the merch table, it has to feel like a special piece of art. And in both of the albums I put out recently, the packaging was actually an extension of the record. And Carver Castle is more so in terms of the – that was the album I put out last March. And that package actually was a threefold that if you folded it out and then you could insert one of the corners into itself. And then if you turn it sideways 90 degrees, it's actually a castle with like little turrets on the side. And then it had instructions in the booklet for how to build a catapult. So you can buy two copies of the cardboard castles

and then play knocking each other down with your friends. Did you get the sense that there were a lot of people who followed through with that? Absolutely not. No, no, I didn't hear from anyone who did it. But to me, it's like the idea that everything that you do around a project is an extension of that project and you should take it all seriously, including the booklet, including the artwork. It's fun for me to figure out how cool we can make the packaging, and it's not expensive, too.

Like, die cuts and color printing isn't any more expensive. It just takes a little creativity. But it's black and white, and then when you can see through to the inside, it's like the psychedelic colors, just like the recent music video. Which track is that?

That's the title track, All You Can Do. So that was kind of intentional that the title track incorporate the visual theme of the album. And the album in a lot of ways is a tribute to my parents who were on the front and back and moved to San Francisco during the Summer of Love

or around that time period and came up in the hippie era. And I love my parents very much. I have a really strong relationship with them and I feel very indebted to them for where I'm at in my life. They gave me all the tools that I needed to be able to follow my dreams and I love them.

And I wanted to have an album that didn't feel as self-indulgent as the last one, even though it is self-indulgent. I mean, the songs are about myself, but they're also about my folks and the way they raised me, and I wanted to infuse the musical spirit of the stuff, the music that they taught me to love

when I was growing up, which for my mom was Derek and the Dominoes and the Beatles and Motown stuff, and I wanted that sound to be present on the record. Well, I will say that most people do not have pictures of their parents who can make an album cover this cool. Like, if you ask me,

you gotta make an album, and you gotta put mom on the back, dad on the front. Yeah. Be careful, they're listening. It would be a different feel. It'd just be a different feel. My parents haven't taken a lot of pictures that look that badass and iconic. These ones, I found them in my house. I hadn't seen them

until I was an adult, and when I came home one Christmas or something, there were these pictures that had been taken out of boxes and they were just physical prints. You know, back in the day, people didn't have digital cameras. They would actually have to develop the photography and they would have maybe one copy of it. And my dad had this picture of himself holding a black cat, which was named Saruman. That was from 1971. And I was like, dad, that is the funniest picture of you that I've ever seen.

He's got the long hippie hair and the glasses and looks so... Oh, yeah, I didn't even notice Saruman down there. He's creeping in the corner. Yes, it's so funny. And to me, those pictures are great. It was before my parents met each other, but both of them were taken in 1971. Oh, wow.

And my mom was in her early 20s at the time. My dad was 27 which is how old i am now and i thought they were such crazy compliments to each other i mean they are they both look like they're thinking about the same thing not only is uh is your dad on the right third your mom's on the left third your dad is right his left side of his face is lit your mom's right side of her face is lit they have this like sadness in their eyes, but this self-awareness. I think that's the reason to buy this one. You can't turn it into a castle.

You can look deep into my parents' eyes and sense their inner humanity. You can look at them both at the same time if you do that. It took me five minutes to realize I can see them simultaneously if I just open up the packaging. If you want to destroy the spine of the record,

you could make them make out with each other too if you fold it all the way around. While I'm doing it, it's happening. Oh, man, their mouths seem to meet. Are you grossed out? You're getting flashbacks of... Pretty grossed out of that time. I didn't know the door was locked.

When I was five and I walked into my parents' bedroom and they said they were hugging. No, so what did your parents say? About the record? No, when you walked in and you were five. I actually do have that memory. That's not just a silly story that I pulled out of nowhere. That's from the deep traumatic memory.

Okay. At least they could have said wrestling. That's what my parents would have said. What did they say when they saw themselves on your cover? Did you tell them ahead of time? Oh, yeah. I mean, every time I incorporate my family into my music, whether it's a photo or a song that's about them.

I always ask permission. And they were flattered. I think they're really honored by it. It's not like I wrote an album that included them and then, you know, I'm not like, I'm not trying to shit on them and like tell people that my parents traumatized me. I want to tell them that I love them and they raised me well and that I'm proud to be part of this family. And so I think they were touched by it.

But they were silent. So there was like an awkward silence. No, they so I think they were touched by it. But they were silent. So there was like an awkward silence. No, they actually told me they were touched by it. Okay, that's good. That's good. So the video for Never Let It Die. I'm working in the circus and searching for purpose. Learning from the bird who's perched on top of the church and chirping a sermon.

You want that early worm. Be the determined sparrow. Flying in loops around the sternest scarecrow. Great song, by the way. Thank you. You got a falcon in this one. Yeah. Is it a hawk or a falcon? I'm trying to remember. I believe I think it was a hawk.

I think it was a hawk. But he never left the perch and then came back to you. You just perched him. There were times when he would get freaked out or she. I don't remember the species or the gender. I really, it's, it's actually kind of embarrassing how little I got to know this bird. I really didn't, didn't ask the it or Z about its story. Um, but yeah, there were times when the bird would get real freaked out and like fly off my arm and it was actually tethered to a little rope. There's only so far that it could fly. And

then, and then my hand would start moving in that direction. But it was kind of scary. I mean, the bird could peck your eyes out, or you really didn't want to freak it out because it would flap its wings up. We've done a few shoots that have incorporated animals. I had a goat in one of them, and we're trying to get a zebra for the next shoot,

but it's actually hard. There's a lot of rules about what you can do with an animal on set, which is good, I think, because you don't want to be able to do anything to an animal. It's a living being. Right. We actually had a falcon on our live show

way back in the day. A guy in our hometown, we were in Lillington, North Carolina, and a friend of a friend said, so-and-so's got a falcon. We're like, bring him to our web show. And then we also did a cooking segment where we made our own guacamole. So we started feeding guacamole to

the hawk. How'd the hawk like it? Or this, the falcon? Well, all the comments started saying, you know, guacamole will kill a hawk. Really? And no one, none of us in the room knew it. Right. Avocados will kill birds. Avocados. That's so specific and weird.

He ended up being okay. And tragic. We didn't give him anywhere near a lethal or a damaging dose. But, I mean, recently we did a llama shoot. And we had to go by the book and get a monitor, like a llama monitor to be here. Usually they have trainers, yeah. Yeah. That's tragic that the bird

will never know the joys of avocado my favorite food of all time oh really oh well i love an avocado yeah so so he got to taste the the forbidden fruit yeah he did but i seem to be okay i'm gonna tell a little story that maybe will get me in trouble but i had a little bit part one time on arrested development the new season of it yeah and there was a segment on it where they had a little bit part one time on Arrested Development, the new season of it. And there was a segment on it where they had a little dove that was supposed to, like, there was a magician trick because Job does magic on the show. And the bird was supposed to look like it's dead. Like he's doing magic, but he botched the trick. So he opens up like the metal tray and the bird is lying there and it's back dead. But it's actually harder to get a dead bird for some reason than it is to get a live one.

And so they had to get a live bird that looked like it was dead. So the trainer took the bird in its hand and then went, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, and then like rattled it around. So it's like brain was going to end its skull and then the bird like lies flat on its back. Really? Because it's like brain trauma. And I was like, that looks really bad. And I asked the animal trainer, I was like, aren't you giving it a concussion

right now to make it lie in its back? And he's like, no, no, it'll be all good. Yeah, I do this all the time, man. Shut up, kid. And they got the scene. They got the scene. And then, did he fly away? I don't think he fly away. I think he probably shoved into his little cage or something. So, was there a monitor there? Like, no, no, no, no, no. No, there's no one.

He was the monitor. He was the trainer. He was the trainer. But there's usually a trainer and then a monitor who just stands there and you pay them just to stand there and shake their head no. Maybe he's... When he starts shaking a bird. He might have been taking bribes under the table or something.

I don't know. Now, we have been enjoying the rapid release of many music videos. The Whoa, Whoa, Whoa video. We've got some questions about that. Go for it. This technique that you have implemented, you have to explain, or is this a trade secret?

No. How is this visually done? It's not a trade secret. We actually explained it the other night. We did this screening called Flux where they do a bunch of music videos, and we did a little presentation on how the effect was done. Just to explain visually, you're rapping,

but it's like the video keeps looping back on itself. Yeah. It's like a GIF or a GIF effect. There's a stutter effect. Like it, it, it keeps, it shows you a few seconds back a few times and a few times and a few times, but you're rapping keeps going forward. Yeah, exactly. So, so the way we did it is we had two shots that we did. The shot where I perform the action. So say I'm dousing this car in gasoline and you see my hand go up and then the gasoline fly out of the end of the nozzle. So I perform that action and then we go back and we find the frame and the director of photography, Alan Gwizdowski, who's the one who came up with this concept, lines up the frame exactly where it's gonna be

when I hit that moment of having the gasoline up in the air and it's gonna be repeated over and over again. He finds that frame on the monitor. So he's on the side while we're still on set and we're monitoring it live. And then he positions me back again with camera and he does an opacity thing where he can see my face and he can also see the frame that we're using before so he makes sure that my face is lined up exactly where the other

one was and then he comes in with a helmet contraption where he basically opacity thing we can relate to that because when we did our t-shirt war stop motion animation we had to keep lining up for every shot make sure it's exactly after we changed tshirts. So yeah, we did a poor man's version of that. Yeah, well we're doing the poor man's version too. I mean, we started out very DIY and guerrilla and have been gradually getting a little bit more professional as the years have gone by.

So you would line it back up. We would line it back up and he would find and he'd have to do little adjustments to my face and then he would come in with this helmet and he would lock me into place and for 15 minutes I would have to stay exactly still because the whole effect was pulled off by stealing the mouth from that frame and then superimposing it posing it on that one exactly as you work the edit but the key to making the effect sell was that the lighting remains exactly the same on that part of my face right so that he can do can do a little, like, fade effect around the edges of it

so that you don't see the edges of it. That was the part that I didn't have figured out was knowing while you're shooting which frames, how he wanted to loop it back. Because I was like, how could you film his mouth in so many different angles? It was very composed.

Every frame... You had figured out the edit ahead of time. Exactly. It was very, like, shot listed and we knew we wanted this side shot and we wanted this one dead on. It was very, and the director, Jackson Adams, really storyboarded it really well before. And for every line, we knew what angle we wanted. Your music videos have this creative component to all of them. There's always something to talk about. Okay, this looks like a

continuous shot that's moving through framed pieces of art that actually come to life and you're the character in each one. Or this is a continuously rotating 360-degree camera shot inside of a cab over time. Right on. I guess I'm curious, is this a mandate from you to directors that you're working with? Or are these your concepts that you're infusing into the music video? It's completely collaborative. I have a very close-knit circle of filmmakers that I work with in LA,

most of whom I met in college. And when we were going about planning the videos for this new album, we sat together and we listened to the album, which was somewhat awkward for me. And we said, okay, what are the songs that we think could best be

translated into music videos? So that's the criteria. It's not, these are my singles. You know, every song on the album is one that I believe in. I made like 30 songs maybe, and they're all songs that I love. I cut the ones that I didn't like. And I don't have singles. I wouldn't put it on the album if I didn't truly love it. I really feel like in this day and age having somebody's attention is so much of a commodity You have to make sure that every moment of what you do is Engaging and entertaining and fun and like thought is put into it and care and love and so that's true from the track listing top To bottom it's why I put effort into the packaging of the album and it goes for the music videos, too And so that's such a main part of marketing is having a music video that people want to talk about. And, and it's so easy to fall off the map and lose people's attention. And I

think that if you don't put out material that's consistently, you know, at least even if people have their favorites and they don't like one as much as the next, they can still tell that care and effort was put into all of them. And that's what I'm going for. For Whoa, Whoa, Whoa. Again, another great song. Tell us about the music video concept for that one. Is it ironic? Or is it an extension of what you what the song means? Anyway, is the song itself ironic? Or does the video make it ironic? This kind of ties back into just like what I'm going for as an artist in general. And I think it confuses some people because when folks ask who my influences are, one of the people that I throw out who generally people haven't heard of, unless they're

really big fans of spoken word poetry is a guy named Bo Sia. And he was on this old TV show called Deaf Poetry Jam, which I used to idolize and was on the final season of which was my first stepping stone into being an artist. And I saw him perform for the first time when I was 15 years old. And I stole elements of his stage persona because I was so enamored by it. And one of the things that he would do is he would come out with this insane hubris and he would just, he would have a poem called I'm Extreme. And it sounds very simple, but he would talk about all of the different ways in which he was so extreme. He would go extreme on a toaster. He would go extreme, like in ways that were so stupid about like how he would make his eggs and stuff. But

he did it with his gravitas and his badassness that made it totally absurd. And that was it. He would get people to laugh just by raising his eyebrow because of this deadpan stare that he'd give people. And what I loved about that is he was being really honest and he's being really self-deprecating. He's being really badass at the same time. And I've kind of used that same technique. And what I like about it is that it allows you to pick apart your own flaws and foibles and be honest about who you are. But at the same time, like, go out on stage and be a badass. And I love that, you know, like, I like putting full confidence into my performances, but also being honest. And so whoa, some people might

hear this braggadocio song and being like, this dude is totally full of himself. But to me, it's supposed to be taken ironically. And the video, the two setups are, one, that I'm lighting this green Lamborghini on fire like a total badass, and then I'm trying to light it on fire, and then I light myself on fire because I am not, in fact, a badass car arsonist.

Well, I love the fact that the visual drives that point home. I mean, I think without the visual, I still was like, it's ironic and it's comedic. Like the irony in the things that you're saying in the song, they're so clever and ironic that they become comical. And then I think it's interesting that in the video you chose to use comedy actors, you know, Jim Belushi and Bo Burnham. It is supposed to be funny. And then the second setup is the bedroom scene where it's like a sex scene. And for the first time in any of my 90 music videos that I've shot, we actually used gratuitous sex to try and send the clicks up.

So I apologize to my fans who saw that as shameless. And, you know, it'll be another 90 videos again before I use a thumbnail of a half-naked woman. Every 90 videos. Yeah, yeah, I get a half-naked woman. Every 90 videos. Yeah, yeah, I get one. You're in the thumbnail a little bit. A little bit. You're like peeking around her.

That's how I got away with it. Right, right. It's a gratuitous sexualization of myself, too. If she wasn't in the video, I would have been upset for a couple of reasons. What are the reasons? Well, one, I would have felt manipulated, and two, she wouldn't have been in the video. Yeah, exactly. She's very beautiful.

She actually went to college with me. What was that phone call like? You know, actually, it was the sex scene itself. And it wasn't a true sex scene. It was a foreplay scene because then I knock a candle off the shelf and the room light's on fire. So that's also an extension of the Lamborghini thing. It's like even if I have a gratuitous sex scene scene it still ends abruptly before i can actually get to the point yeah so it was a little awkward because she had like pasties on and she's this

moment where she has to unclasp a front clasp bra and i'm like trying to not look at the breast but i'm like i'm not not looking at your you gotta have an eyeline though yeah exactly you have to have an eyeline and i'm like or two eyelines yeah exactly if you want them yeah you got two eyes um i don't know it. It was a little... But it was your... You said, I got to have an eye light. You had a conversation with her?

I did. I talked to her about that, yeah. And she was like, oh, go for it. It's fine. She knew what she was getting into. Was she an actress? She is an actress.

And she knew exactly. It was very, very explicit. Not the sex, but the breakdown of the casting that said there's going to be a moment where there's the casting that said there's going to be a moment where there's implied nudity and there's going to be a front class bra that you're going to have to open up and wear pasties on set. And there were, you know, it was, it was, there was no bones about it. We weren't trying to push the envelope or have her do anything that she didn't

want to. So we just tried to be very upfront about it. And it was a bit awkward because I've never done that before. And not to mention, it sounds like you had to wear a helmet that kept your head in the same place while she straddled you for like an hour. Well, she was gone by the time the helmet came on. Yeah, we did the straddling scene and then she left and the helmet came on. Gotta put my helmet on. No, that's just what I do in the bedroom anyway.

I find that it's very, very erotic to just strap yourself in place and let the woman take over. It's safer. That's the ultimate safe sex is wear a helmet. But that wasn't your first lovemaking scene and just strap yourself in place and let the woman take over. It's safer. That's the ultimate safe sex. Absolutely. Is wear a helmet. But that wasn't your first lovemaking scene because you made out with an older woman on your web series. Oh, I did.

That's true. Man, you're so familiar with my work. That's amazing. I'm very honored by that. Yeah, that was really funny because I have like kind of a running joke through my stuff that's actually true, that I'm really attracted to older women

and I have somewhat of a cougar fetish. And so I'm making out with this older woman in a car in the back of my Subaru hatchback. And then it turns out that I've like bogarted Andy Milonakis' lover. And then he comes banging on the door of my car and then kicks me out of the car. And then he has sex with her in the back of my Subaruaru while i'm like sitting forlornly on the sidewalk and then you we do the titanic shot where like a hand uh sweeps across the steamy window and a single tear rolls down my cheek and that's called watsky's making an album yeah yeah i did this video narrative series that was really fun a little while ago yeah we we should get back to that. But well, going back to the whoa, whoa, whoa, I guess my question was,

I understand your inspiration for the lyrics and the hubris and the humor in that, but what are you saying about yourself? I think what I'm saying about myself, and this is true of pretty much all of my material, is that you own your flaws. I mean, I think that what's really important for me is if something is happening that I'm embarrassed about or humiliated about or could be perceived as a flaw or weakness, that if I'm trying to be an honest writer, I have to acknowledge that.

And it goes back to if you say something or if something is a potential perceived weakness of yours and you acknowledge it before anybody else does, it takes away the power of the people who might be making fun of you for that thing. So I'm never going to be a pop rapper. And if I am, it's going to be in some weird left of center way. I'm not cut out to be a pop star. I'm quirky and I'm weird. And I try to own those flaws and quirks. And that's a theme that permeates this album and Cardboard Castles and my first one, Watsky. Growing up, did you learn that lesson the hard way? I mean, as kids, well, as people, we're all self-conscious to a certain degree, most of us to a degree more than we're willing to admit. Was that something that you learned at a young age when you were trying to hide something embarrassing about yourself? Yeah, I think it's a comedian's impulse.

It's like when you get made fun of for something, and it definitely goes back to adolescence and the chips on your shoulder that you develop when you're a kid. For instance, I had epilepsy when I was in middle school, and I still do, but the first seizure that I had was in seventh grade, and I was at a big public school in San Francisco, and I had a grand mal seizure on the blacktop while I was running the mile in gym. seizure on the blacktop while I was running the mile in gym. And I got back to school after coming back from the hospital and kids started calling me seizure boy. There's this one kid who just That's original. Yeah, seriously. I mean, middle schoolers, you know, they're real poets. And I was getting relentlessly teased about it by a few people. And, and for me, you know, humor and deflection is the way to deal with it. If you look like you're getting beaten by those things, then it can consume you. And you take away the power of your bullies by getting there first.

And I think that's making fun of myself is something that was always a tool that I was able to use to, you know, avoid getting teased even worse. It's just you make people laugh. So do you think that that was instrumental in you kind of seeking to become a performer? I've always been an attention seeker. And when I was younger, that manifested itself as me being an extremely obnoxious kid and being really the smart aleck in class, the class clown, somebody who was desperate for attention. And those aren't necessarily positives about my personality. They're also things about me that point to, you know, an ego that I've

probably had since I was young and feeling like I deserved attention, which I don't believe any more than anyone deserves attention more than anybody else. But when I was a kid, I was always talking out of turn in class and trying to make sure I was the center of attention at all times. And it wasn't until I was in high school when I saw deaf poetry for the first time that I was able to figure out, okay, there are moments where it's okay to ask for attention and you can put the spotlight on yourself. And if you're a performer, it gives you this outlet to get that positive reinforcement from people. And I think that gradually over the next few years, I was able to learn, okay, I don't need to be the center of attention at all times. There are moments where I can step

up on stage and I can get that ego fix, yeah, and then, you know, be a reasonable person and listen to other people instead of constantly having to talk. Well, let's go with the poetry vein. But first, let's pause and make sure we get the full epilepsy story. So, I mean, how does that conclude? Well, it's open-ended. I had a seizure that year in seventh grade.

And you're not considered epileptic unless you have more than one seizure. So they were just like, we'll monitor you and see what happens. And then I had another seizure two weeks later. And so I had this second one and they said, okay, you have epilepsy. We're going to put you on medication. So for three years, I was on an anti-seizure medication called Depakote. And it has a lot of negative side effects that can totally change your personality and how sharp you are, whether you're able to dial into conversations. And I was able to actually, so I had a normal EEG sometime in the middle of high school and I weaned myself off the medication. And then I didn't have another seizure for 14 years until

four months ago. I was at the gym. I, as a Los Angeles resident now, obviously started to develop body image issues. You have to do it. I joined the gym, yeah. And I started working out, and when I was on the elliptical machine, I had my first seizure since I was in middle school. And when that happens, how long does it last?

And then you just, it's like coming out of a blackout? Yeah, well many people have auras where you can kind of sense that this is coming, but there's nothing you can do about it. And it's just a general uneasy feeling. And it happened that time too. But because it had been so long since I'd had a seizure, I wasn't thinking, I was just thinking that I'm lightheaded because I'm getting off the elliptical. And then I blacked out and didn't remember anything and then woke up in an ambulance. And it's, I think the seizure itself only lasts for a few minutes, but you'd have to ask other people

because obviously I was unconscious for it. And then after that, it's just like waking up from the fog. And that's the strangest experience is when you're coming to, it really is in the first moments of it, you're a human being, but you have no idea what's going on. And I couldn't tell you what decade it was.

It's like coming out of a coma. And they're like, what decade is it right now? And I have no idea. And in my mind, I'm saying, I'm so sorry to the EMT. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. I know that I can know what decade it is, but I can't tell you right now. And then you start coming out of this fog gradually, gradually.

Okay, what year it is? How many fingers am I holding up? I'm trying to process this information. I'm so sorry. And I just kept saying that over and over again. I'm so sorry. I don't know. I don't know. And it just kept saying that over and over again. I'm so sorry. I don't know. I don't know.

And it's a very disorienting feeling. At what point did it dawn on you that you had had another one after all those years? They told me. And it was just like, oh, f***. And epilepsy is a strange medical condition because you actually sleep through the most intense part of it. And then you just are told about it afterwards. Oh, you survived survived it's good because the most dangerous thing about a seizure is is like if you fall or if you're operating heavy machinery if you're doing something the seizure itself is not

the dangerous part except that it can really if you have a lot of them it can mess with your brain waves but you know many people have a lot of seizures and are able to be very functional people so are you just being monitored now are you like you like, oh. So I had another one. So I went on this medication called Keppra. Meaning you had one four months ago and then you had another one? So yeah, I had a fourth one. So I had two when I was in seventh grade and now I had a second one after that gym one. So I tried to wean myself off the Keppra.

The doctor put me on it immediately. And I said, I don't want this for my quality of life. I want to try and get off the medication before I go on tour again. I'm willing to forfeit my driver's status in order to try and be medication free. I will say off the bat, I believe that everybody's brain is different and everybody's cure and every what's right for everyone is, is not the same. But for me being on an intense pharmaceutical is really something that I don't want. Like I, I cherish the ability to be myself and to always be able to think clearly. And I value that. And so I tried to get off the medication and the next day, as soon as I stopped the medication, I had another seizure and I woke up in my apartment and my chin was cut open and I

don't know what happened. I was actually alone. And I just kind of like groggily came to and looked in the mirror and there was blood coming down my face. And then I had to call a Lyft and the Lyft driver was just like, what happened? I was like, I don't really know. Just take me to the hospital. So I went in and, you know, I stayed and a friend came and picked me up. And we just decided because I was about to leave on Warped Tour right before that.

And that's a two month tour that's really intense that I got back from about a week ago. And I decided to stay on the medication because if I had another seizure, it would be catastrophic to our touring plans. And that just doesn't affect me, but it affects all the people I tour with, my band members. If I had to cancel dates, you know, I have fans who are looking forward to this. And so we made a decision, okay, I lost my driver's license status. I'm taking lifts around and stuff and buses and rollerblading

and a combination of it but it's definitely affected my life but I haven't had one since then I'm on a low dosage of Keppra and Lamotrigine right now and I have another tour coming up to support this album so I'm just trying to play it safe

I'm not drinking at all I haven't had a beer in three months I'm not drinking caffeine just like anything that I can do to make it so that I don't have another seizure, I'm trying to do right now until I get done with the touring phase. And then I'm going to try and get off the medication again. Do you experience a struggle with any side effects at this point? There's often an adjustment period to medication that affects your brain.

And I definitely feel a lot better than I did when I started it. The first few weeks that I was having it, I would have these weird moments where like, say I'm having this conversation with you right now, I would just lose the ability to be present in the conversation. I would hear you guys talking. And it's like being mentally underwater. And I would know what you were saying. But I wouldn't be able to respond. And I don't know if you have, have you ever had the feeling where you're waking up from a dream and you want to move your arm or you want to get out of bed, but you can't do it. Oh yeah. And sleep paralysis. I have it. It's like that. It's like that, but you're awake and you're sitting there. And I had

it at a Mexican restaurant one time with my friends and it was like five minutes and I was just sitting there with the chips and I was like, I want to eat a chip. I want to be part of this conversation, and then you come out of it, and you tell everybody at the table, guys, I'm back now. I just wanted some of those chips, guys. You don't even know how much. You don't know what's going on,

like this intense struggle that's going on in your brain, and it was very weird, but I haven't felt like that in a while, and I didn't feel like that on Warped Tour, and I'm really glad, because aerobic exercise seems to be my epilepsy trigger, that that could lead to another one, but fortunately it didn't, and so I'm knocking on wood, and yeah, I'm good for now.

All right, so take us back to spoken word and the start of that. So I started my freshman year. I got really interested in hip-hop when I was in middle school, and I was just a kid who listened to whatever was on the radio, and I loved Eminem and Nelly and Ludacris and I loved rapping but it wasn't until I was a freshman in high school that I saw poetry for the first time performance poetry and it blew my mind this for those of you who are unfamiliar with slam poetry feel free to type it into YouTube and spend a night and it's a polarizing art form some people really don't like it because it can be kind

of preachy and serious and ranty but those are the reasons that I think I connected with it as a high schooler because I was really emo and I still love it. I think it's a very direct art form and can be a very honest art form and can also incorporate humor and lyricism, performance. And to be a really, really good spoken word poet, you have to be a really solid performer and a really solid writer because the work is so personal. You can't be a mediocre writer and a great performer. You can't be a mediocre performer and a great writer. You have to, you have to take both of those really seriously. And so that's why I really loved it. And was there a specific opportunity that poetry became the outlet initially versus, oh, I want to be a hip hop artist initially? I did both. I never,

I started rapping when I was around the same time. It just so happened that the first breaks that I got were as a poet because there was a spoken word scene in San Francisco for young people where I would go and do open mics and I would go to free workshops. This organization called Youth Speaks was a nonprofit literary arts organization in San Francisco that I became really involved with. What was the first one you did publicly? I had a poem called Beliefs. It was like terrible. You go back and listen to it. It's just cringeworthy. But you've got to tap into something that you believe deeply to make those really work. Right. As you're saying, I had a

poem about being half Jewish that I did when I was 15 about the fact that I have all these Jewish tendencies that my father bestowed on me because he comes from a Jewish family, but that were not Jewish religiously at all. So I felt like I'm a cultural Jew, but not a religious Jew. And all these like Woody Allen type neuroses I've been like passed on, but I didn't get any of the actual religion. So I had a poem called Half Jewish about that. And the one line from it that I still to this day I'm kind of proud of but has never made anything else was like I started doing the prayer. Baruch atah. I don't know. Melancholy.

Chomsky. Gnom. Shecheyatsu. Vikings. Randy Moss. And Super Bowl. Because I don't know any of the actual prayer stuff. And I got a good laugh out of that.

But that was it. So I did those poetry slams for like four or five years. And I got a little laugh out of that, but that was it. So I did those poetry slams for like four or five years, and I got a little bit better every year. And then when I was 19, I won the San Francisco City Slam. It was my last year of eligibility, and so I went on to the national competition with the Bay Area team. It's a competition where you're performing original work, and then a random panel of judges scores your poems on a scale of 1 to 10.

So getting a 30 is getting a perfect score. And I did really well when I was 19 in 2006. And my Bay Area team won the national competition at the Apollo Theater. And there were scouts for Deaf Poetry Jam there. Did you get a 30? I got a 30 for my poem V for Virgin, which was a poem about being a virgin until high school graduation. And the Deaf Poetry Scouts saw that poem.

And I got onto the show. The final season of the show on HBO, I was on it when I was 19, which I'm really proud of. And it wasn't until that poem that I think they were able to say, okay, we get it. Like this weird, quirky, dorky white kid,

now we can paint him in this way. Who's we? We are the producers of Deaf Poetry who are selecting who's going to be on the show. And they'd seen me in the past. Right, because how much of a minority on that show were you as the young white kid? The show's pretty racially diverse, but I think that they didn't know how to peg me at first. Because I'm not a suave, sexy guy.

I was all elbows as a high school kid. And I was doing these intense political poems that they were like, yeah, that's cool. You're scoring well and stuff, like we don't get it and and even that show as cool as it was that a poetry show was on tv they were still Hollywood producers who were trying to find types for the show oh that kid's talking about being a virgin and he looks like let's do it yeah let's go for it right so but but it was an honest poem I mean it was in some ways typecast me as this kind of nerdy character but it was a poem that was I mean, it was in some ways typecast me as this kind of nerdy character, but it was a poem that was very honest to my experience in high school.

And so I wasn't embarrassed about it because it was true. So I had this little appearance on HBO that allowed me to get these college gigs. Have you guys heard of the NACA circuit? It's called National Association of Campus Activities. And I did this NACA showcase through YouSpeaks. They were trying to do a college tour. So there are people who are specifically college booking agents. And they were like, you're going to do great in the college market. And that means that you perform at these NACA conferences and then try and get bounced around college campuses.

And so I did that for about four years. And for the first two years, I would take all my classes at Emerson in Boston where I went Monday, Wednesday. I would take really, really long class days. So I was a time student, but then I would have Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, I had a four day weekend. So I'd leave Thursday morning. And then I'd come back Sunday night, I'd play like three college shows in like Iowa or North Dakota or something. And then I'd fly back and I'd and I'd go back to my classes. And what are these crowds like? We've talked to some people before who have done now that you mention it, I do understand. Yes.

Well, Pete had some great stories. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Nice Peter. Yeah, yeah. We've actually connected. I think he may have actually been on the same college booking agency as me. He was like in a McDonald's at one point. Well, yeah.

The story that he tells is that you kind of are given this crowd that isn't out there because they know who you are. And you have to convince them that you're worth listening to. They're kids that are in like Sioux City, Iowa, and they're so bored out of their skulls that they're just like, okay, we'll watch whatever the campus activities board brought in on Friday night. And they'll watch it very passively. So you really, really have to work. The metaphor that sometimes I use as a baseball fan to describe it is as a performer, you're performing for these potentially extremely indifferent audiences. And I should say that sometimes I got great crowds and the campus activity committees were really passionate about pushing the show and people showed up who wanted to be there or poetry kids. But I would

say the vast majority of them were performing for a small group of kids in a cafeteria or a basement or a little cafe or something on campus and maybe 20, 40 kids that are sitting cross-armed like, entertain me, go. And it can be very demoralizing when the shows go badly. And I did that probably 200 gigs and you drive in your rental car to your cafeteria and you perform your show alone and you go back to your Motel 6 and then you eat your Stouffer's mac and cheese you bought at Walmart and watch the Daily Show and then call your mom and tell her that you don't think you can do it anymore. You just can't take the abuse and you've done it for four years and you're making the same amount of money that you were when you started and

you were in college. And what was the hope at that time? Because what is the realization of success as a slam poet? Well, there is nowhere to go really. And I think that this is the advice that I would give to anyone who wants to be an artist, which is there's no such thing as a realization of success. There's only enjoying doing it. And obviously there's milestones that you can hit and you can set goals for yourself and try and achieve them. But it's also possible to set goals for yourself, achieve them and still not be happy. And the vast majority of people are like that because a lot of the people that get successful as artists got that way because they're extremely driven people with a plan for themselves and they cannot turn an off switch. So you're constantly moving forward and having trouble taking stock of the small

moments of happiness along the way. And when you're performing alone, you have no one to talk to when it goes badly. And that's when it's really hard. But when it's going great, it's very satisfying. So I'll say that even though I'm saying that lesson, I oftentimes don't take my own advice and get really bummed out and depressed and sad about it and thinking like, I'm not where I want to be. But I was working towards trying to have people take my music seriously the whole time. So even as I was doing the spoken word stuff, I was still releasing independent music. And I used that money that I made touring colleges after school to fund my first few music videos. And around the time that I graduated, I'd gone home for Christmas break and I came out to L.A.

I studied acting in college and I was auditioning for commercials and I wasn't getting anything. And I was really depressed and I felt like I wasn't going to make it in LA. And I went home and I remember just lying on my bedroom floor, feeling sorry for myself, looking up at the ceiling, feeling like, man, what am I doing? I should have gone into a career that helped other people instead of being a failed egomaniac. And so I kind of tried to say, okay, you have this skill set that's kind of strange. If you were to boil down what you're good at and put it into a 90 second video, what would that 90 seconds of entertainment look like? And so I set out to create a video that was like a commercial for myself that people would want to share. And I said, okay, I've got this skill at

rapping pretty fast, but it has to incorporate my sense of humor. It has to have wordplay in it. It has to be entertaining, and it has to be a live performance thing so people can see I'm, in fact, doing it at the time. So I did this fast rap video over Busta Rhymes' Break Your Neck, which is like music that I started listening to when I was a freshman in high school. So that era of music is something that I really loved. And it was a success. I mean, it seems like you had more than the obvious skill that was on display in the video. You had the idea to call it pale kid raps fast, which is exactly the kind of thing that shameless clickbait, but it works and it did work and it worked almost too well. I mean,

it was instant success. It was just an overnight boom. And it was like within 20 minutes, this thing had been shared like 10,000 times. And the next morning, it had like 4 million hits on it. And we were getting calls from the Ellen Show and stuff. How long did you sit on it before you uploaded it? Was it like, I have this idea, 12 hours later, it was up on the internet? Or was it a couple of weeks? I mean, we might have waited a week or something.

In fact, before that video went out, I'd shot a music video called MC Name for one of the songs on my first album. And the idea was, okay, we're going to shoot this viral video, but we need to have an instant follow-up to it that showcases what I, my real songs so that I'm not a flash in the pan if this succeeds. And it succeeded beyond my wildest dreams. Tell us more of the details about what happened because it was crazy. Well, I remember we went out and got drinks that night because we were like, Jesus Christ, like we made something that people watch. Like it was so, it was exciting for us. I've been putting out spoken word poems and traveling the country and playing for like 20, 30 people and having no one there and being demoralized night after night. And not that

they were as all demoralizing, you know, I was making money as an artist. Yeah. I have to be grateful and pinch myself even to perform for that many people and, and get a check to come to a college. But, but I was feeling like I was totally at a dead end. And so then this video came in, we're like, Oh my God, like we might be able to parlay this into something else. And so then the, the battle became, okay, we have people's attention right now. How can I translate this into the career I want to have? And I think that there was an opportunity for me to maybe go in a different direction and do Pale Kid Raps faster and Pale Kid Raps even faster than that. And going back to the animal conversation we had, actually, I had this idea because I was thinking that was what I had to do. I got to incorporate crazier animals into it. And I was like, okay, pale kid raps fastest with the slowest loris.

I was thinking, I get the fastest rapper and the slowest loris. And then I looked into renting a slow loris and I realized that these slow lorises that I'm going to use in the video are actually poisonous. And also, it's very bad for them to be exposed to light. The reason they're so cute and they lie on the back is because they're nocturnal and being traumatized by the light. So we scrapped the idea when we realized how inhumane it was. But we have walked across an intersection at the speed of a slow loris. Yeah. That was a very recent experiment we did.

That's how I know that they're toxic. I also wouldn't recommend that. Yeah, no, it's all bad. Just stay away from lorises in general. So you get a call from Ellen. Yeah. Is that an automatic yes? No.

It was a think for a second and then, yeah, okay, of course. But at first, I mean, immediately within a day of having this video come out, I was worried about getting pigeonholed in this way. And it is something that I've had to battle for a few years is like the stigma of being a gimmicky fast rapper. And I'm not ashamed. I still, if I had to do it all again, I would absolutely do that video again because it's giving me so many amazing opportunities and so many genuine fans. One of the things that you, that we see that you have done is that video is no longer called Pale Kid Raps Fest.

It's called Watsky Raps Fest. It is. And it's unlisted. It's unlisted, yeah. People still find it. And we were actually looking just a second ago. It was up to like 25 million views. And like every few hours, somebody's like, I found it.

Yeah. Because, and I think that kind of ties in with something else we were talking about. Respect is so important as an artist in general. But I feel like in hip hop, respect is more important. Yeah. And so it seems like you immediately started seeing that like, this could be too good in the wrong way. And I've got to counteract that. It's my perception of it is that you've more than counteracted it, but you're saying that this is something that you struggle with

since the initial success. It took a year after that video came out for me to actually get bookings at real venues, at real clubs as an artist. And I had to first cold call places. I couldn't get a booking agent who would book me in clubs and I had to do it myself. And I had to first cold call places. I couldn't get a booking agent who would book me in clubs and I had to do it myself. I was trying to convince people like, I love YouTube. I'm going to continue to exist and be a part of the YouTube community, but there's more that I want to do. I want to be a live performer and I want people to take my work somewhat seriously. And so I started just emailing the venues. I would look through the dates of the artists whose careers I admired and who were at where I was sort of in terms of the size of their audience.

And I looked through the listings of the venues they were playing in different cities. And I was like, okay, the Drunken Unicorn in Atlanta. And I would email their booker. And I would email the person in Minneapolis who did Triple Rock or whatever venue was the size that I thought I could play. And I would say, here's my elevator pitch for why you should book me. And the vast majority of them ignored my emails. There may be four cities in the country that were like, okay, we'll book a show with you. And so I booked the shows independently.

And then at that same time, I found a booking agent who, because I established these cornerstone gigs, were like, okay, we'll route the rest of the tour around them for you and we'll see what happens. We'll roll the dice. And that's when we went out in 2012 on the Nothing Like the First Time tour. And it's taken a long time. And were you with anybody at that point or was it just you solo show? I actually went out with a guy named Dumbfounded who's also had a like YouTube following first. He was a battle rapper on Grind Time and he came out and did the tour with us. But, you know, it's still taking a while. And last night, I played a gig called Low End Theory

in LA, which is a really small venue that is kind of like the hipster tastemaker gig, where like Flying Lotus and all the people who are like hip beatmakers go. And I bombed last night. And it was the first time since the college gigs where it was demoralizing. It's like, holy, like, like half the audience left during my show. And it wasn't because I was performing badly because I played on Warped Tour all summer for 50 shows and the audience was going nuts. And I had like thousands of people at some of the shows. And it just goes to show that you can't appeal to everybody. As much as I'm going to change some people's minds, there's always going to be pockets and communities who don't f*** with what you do because music is so subjective. And you bring your story into it and

if someone decides not to like you, you know, it could be as much about their perception of who you are as what you're actually doing. And hip hop especially, it's important what you do, but also the perception of authenticity is really important. For some people, the way the music that I present, they perceive it as very authentic. But for some hip hop heads, they perceive it as very much not hip hop when they come to the genre to expect. For me, when I listen to Iggy Azalea, I hear her music and I think she's putting on a voice. Like you hear her in interviews, and I apologize to Iggy Azalea fans out there, but there's certain artists that I listen to and I'm like, man, you don't sound in your music like you sound like when you're having a conversation with me. And that's the opposite of what I'm going for. When I want people to listen to my records, I want them to say, this is the same dude I'm sitting across from the table

from. There's no air being put on. He is himself on his music. And when some people listen to my music, they think, oh man, he sounds like a corny white dude. He sounds like a nerd. Well, guess what? That's kind of who I am. So, you know, I'm going to do that and bring it to the table and be unashamed about it. But I'm also going to try and be a good rapper. Like it's not a gimmick that I want to lean on as a crutch. It's just to say, I'm going to be myself and bring it to the table and be unashamed about it, but I'm also going to try and be a good rapper. It's not a gimmick that I want to lean on as a crutch. It's just to say I'm going to be myself and bring it to the table and take it or leave it. And some people leave it. In retrospect, having done the

Watsky's Making an Album narrative series, do you think that at times your comedy works against you in terms of being seen as legitimate? And specifically for that project, I'm curious why you decided to do that. And was it effective for what you wanted to do? Was it a marketing tool? Was it a passion project? It was a passion project. And I don't think that it hurt me or helped me in any way. It was just something fun that I got to do. And I don't think that hurts you because you look at a lot of rappers, they act and have been in funny projects. I think that it's accepted and it's okay for you to exist across multiple platforms

and have a sense of humor and be self-deprecating, especially if that's what you do in your music. So yeah, I don't think it's helped or hurt me. It's not like it's skyrocketed me to fame or gotten me a bunch of Hollywood parts. But what I want, and there's going to be a time that comes when my knees give out and I'm no longer able to tour 90% of the year and be a rapper when I'm going to have to find something else to do. And I hope I have a long career as a writer and performer and I want

to get into narrative and maybe someday I'll be a screenwriter. And one of the reasons that I wanted to get out of this constant college touring, because I figured out a formula that worked and I did the same show. And for like the last two years, I was just on autopilot and I knew how to do it. And I knew how to do it. And I knew how to how to succeed and do the right pop culture references that would make the college kids laugh wherever and, and it felt lazy to me. And I wanted to do something that scared me again. And that's how I felt about getting into the club touring. And before I was able to actually do it, I had no idea if I could actually put on a show as a headlining rapper and entertain people. I

didn't know what it took to make that show successful. And I was deathly nervous. I was vomiting the first night before I played my first club gig as a headliner. And at a certain point, I'll probably feel that way about music and I'll want to do something else again. And that's what I viewed that narrative project as. Like flex your muscles. Try something that scares you and have fun with it. Well, I do definitely get the impression that authenticity is very

important to you, that you're not a fan of hypocrisy. And in your recent song, Ink Don't Bleed, you start off the first verse talking about some people who are hypocrites. Some guy hits about the racks that they earn. Say there's Benjamins and Jacksons in their pockets to burn. But when they shoot the video, producers pass around a bucket full of rented jewelry for them to rock And return then you start talking about yourself and you address the event that happened on the warped tour in November 2013 last year We dismiss our heroes skeletons no matter how grim a fan saying I'd be honored to be injured by him Well fam this branch is thin but I'll go out on a limb to say she didn't love her ulna poking out of her skin Yeah, so I mean for those of you who haven't seen it, I took the extremely stupid decision to,

and I should preface it by saying that my stage show at that point, I was taking increasingly big risks on stage, and I would jump off speaker stacks. And there was a moment at a show that I played in Wisconsin for a Halloween outdoor party, I jumped off the roof of a frat house and a crowd of people who crowd surfed me to the front of the stage. And I was starting to feel like I'm the shit. I can get away with stuff. And I started to feel invincible, which clearly is not the case. Nobody's invincible.

Bones break. And they did in this scenario. I was playing a show in London at the Warped Tour in one of the biggest venues I've ever played, Alexandra Palace in London, where the Stones have played. And, you know, I started to believe my own hype. And I climbed up a 35-foot lighting rig and jumped off of it. Now let's pause for a second. Yeah.

35 feet. It's very high. I'm not good with visualizing numbers, but I saw the clip and I was like, oh, that's 35 feet. It's, I mean, it's crazy. People watch the video and they're like, that guy's a f***ing idiot. Like, how could I ever be a fan of his work? It's, it's really like one of those things where you can point to a couple other people who have done something that stupid, but those people had much bigger fan bases than me and audiences who really, really liked them and wanted to catch them. And I was performing a Warped Tour, which wasn't my crowd. And I don't know why I believe that this would be successful. And,

you know, I did believe I would get caught by them as, as ludicrous as it sounds when you watch the video. I didn't do it because I was trying to be a human missile and injure people. I did it because I got up my own and I thought that I could get away with something that I clearly couldn't. And there's something in my brain that's so weird because I'm a very organized person and I'm a planner in my career. Like I'm thinking many steps ahead, but the minute I step on stage, that part of me melts away.

And I'm trying in every moment to put on the best, most entertaining show I can for the audience. And, you know, it got away from me and I made an extremely irresponsible decision. And yeah, it was like in the heat of the moment, but I thought about it maybe like a song beforehand. And I was thinking like, oh man, maybe when the big climax comes, I can climb up that thing and they'll all catch me and it'll be awesome.

And I'll be legendary and it'll be this great thing where I'll be hailed as like the most brave, like awesome performer. And that's what I was thinking. And I got up there and then I looked down and I was like, holy, what are you doing? Like you might die right now. And, and, and all these thoughts are happening in a split second. And I realized it was way too high for me to climb down. I could have, um, but I decided to just jump off it. And it was mitigated by some factors that made it even more dangerous that he didn't realize at the time. Like for instance, I was

backlit by the lights that were in back of me. So the audience below couldn't actually even see me because they were seeing shining lights coming right in back of me. And then I also threw my hat off because often when I go crowd surfing, I take my hat off so the audience can't snatch it off my head. So, so they'll throw it back to stage. I threw my hat off, but I threw it into the crowd. And so people were looking down at the hat when I was coming at them and I hit these people and I broke a girl's arm and a guy's back was injured and both of them went to the hospital. And what happened to you? I was bruised. I also went to the hospital. I was put in a neck brace. And what happened to you at that moment?

I also went to the hospital. I was put in a neck brace. I was in the ambulance with the girl whose arm was broken. And I didn't know how badly I was hurt, but it was all bangs and bruises. And I cut my lip open with my tooth, but I had a few stitches on my lip, but it healed up. I was not badly hurt. I had the wind knocked out of me and was deeply humiliated and felt horrible for the people who I injured. And I've done my best to try and make it right with them. And I haven't heard anything from the girl. You know, I'm assuming for legal reasons, they're not allowed to get in touch with me. So

I haven't been in touch with her. I was in touch with a guy for a while. I don't want to go into extreme detail about it because there is some legal stuff going on, but for the people, just so it doesn't seem like I'm trying to obfuscate anything, you know, I've done everything that I could to try and make sure that they're better and that I've done everything I can to reach out to the best of my knowledge. They're all right. But I can't say that with absolute certainty because I don't have them on the phone saying, you know, I've healed up. I've tried to do everything I can and just address the situation and be honest about it. It was tough. Like, you know, at that point I was thinking, oh, is it, is it insensitive for me to go on

with a career and just sweep this incident under the rug and pretend like it didn't happen and keep releasing albums and playing shows and stuff when I've altered the course of several people's lives? But even before you got to considering those things, was there a moment of fear that I may have just really damaged my career? Absolutely. It was a combination of that and fear that I'd really ruined people's lives. And they may still have fallout from this. I'm not sure.

If you're listening to this, all I can say is I hope that you're 100% back to normal in your daily life. And to the best of my knowledge, you are. But I'm not sure. And then you say, you wrap up that that verse bandage the wound and then vanish blank is the newest of canvases when they zoom in the cameras give them the truth what's the truth about you that maybe you discovered in this that i kind of hear in those lyrics i think the truth that i discovered is that my ego is bigger than i thought it was. And that there was a desire to be a rock

star that I was playing into. And that I need to examine and address and really try and work on because that didn't just happen for no reason. It happened as a manifestation of something that's inside of me, which, which I think is, is partly my desire to put on a good show and to be entertaining and to always give 110% at every single show that I put on. But that doesn't have to come at the expense and the health and the safety of your audience. There's a line between putting on a great energetic show and damaging equipment and people. And that's something that I really needed to work on and have tried to. I had a PR person at the time who was a great person, but we didn't completely see eye to eye on how to handle the situation. And they were suggesting, you know, maybe wait about this and don't address it and

wait for it to blow over. And I just, the guilt was eating at me. And so the next night at the hotel or that night at the hotel in London, I was just feeling totally gutted. Just like, I'm going to just post up my feelings. I'm not going to let this fester. I'm going to, I'm going to own this and then I'm going to let whatever happens happen. And that was your Facebook? That was a Facebook post that I made hours afterwards. And, you know, I'm gonna own this and then I'm gonna let whatever happens happen. And that was a Facebook post that I made hours afterwards and I'm not gonna have a PR person vet it. I'm just gonna write it

and let people take it or leave it. And a lot of people, they did not forgive me at that time and I got trolled really, really badly and then we went on with our tour. I had like five more shows, six more shows. At what point did you write Ink Don't Bleed? Write this verse kind of unpacking it?

It took a while. I finished the tour and I kind of limped through the last five shows of it. And I was co-headlining with a rapper named Wax who I did Warped Tour with. Yeah. And we flipped around. Normally I was the closer and Wax was the guy who would open.

But for the last five shows, I opened and he closed because I just wanted to get it over with. I was having trouble eating. I was very depressed about it. And I didn't want to cancel the shows because I had fans that maybe were waiting for months to see it. And I felt like it was a disservice to them and that not going on with my career was not the brave move to make either. That there had to be a fine line that the only way that I could do this and continue to be an artist and somebody that I felt like was putting was was creating a good example for my fans in the midst of a bad example that I set was by being a good example of how to deal with a terrible miscalculation and so that's what I've tried to do and it took like four months to write that song and it sounds like there's specific lessons learned, but I hear in the song that there's also a larger point that

maybe you're making. You say, I'm a complicated guy, but then you talk about mega church leaders sleeping with male hookers, mayors hitting crack pipes with their cookers. Is it, I mean, are you complicated? Are you a hypocrite? I mean, what are you saying? What I'm saying in that song is that what I bring to the table as an artist for those people who continue to want to listen to my music is that I will always be trying to be truthful about my experience. And so much of this industry that we work in is about artifice and about presenting an artificial image. And I believe that Iggy Azalea is presenting a very artificial image to people.

She's not the only one. And it's not a terrible thing. They figured out a way to make a lot of money and to appeal to lots and lots of people. But I think there's something more powerful about telling a story in a real way. And people can follow me. And if I lost a bunch of fans through that,

at least the people who stuck around are gonna know how I really felt about it. And I don't have a major label telling me I can't do something. And that permeates politics and every walk of public life, people doing crisis management and stuff like that. All the stories that I told at the beginning of the first verse of that song that sets up the second verse about myself are true stories that I've heard in the industry of, you know, the fact that there's a huge pop star who will, shall remain nameless right now that I've heard actually not only doesn't write her own material, but actually has session singers that come in and record all of her vocal parts, has no part in the making of her album whatsoever, except the fact that she goes into a studio one day,

they take her picture and put it on the cover and use her name. And that's crazy. And people idolize that person. And they're their favorite artist. And people are impressionable. And sometimes it's really hard to distinguish between what's bullshit and what's not.

And all I can say is I'm trying my best to not put out bullshit. It's funny, even in My First Stalker, you're kind of dealing with the same thing. You're talking about your stalker, but you're dealing with her expectations. Right. You probably think I'm inside

Like some kind of savior Solving world hunger Working on Sudoku And filling in the numbers Polishing my halo Ooh, I bet you wonder It's kind of that same message. I'm trying the best I can to be honest,

but actually not being a hypocrite means saying that I'm a hypocrite. Right. It's like you had to apologize to your stalker. I, in fact, stalked that stalker's Twitter account because I was so curious to see how they would react to that song, and my hope was that they would view it as a tribute and as a fan, they'd be like, wow, like there's a song on his

album about me. That's amazing. And I don't say anything disparaging about the person. But then I found out, I read the Twitter account that they were no longer a fan of mine and they didn't like my album. They didn't like my Carver Castles album anymore either, that this album they'd loved so much, they'd now decided that they'd grown out of and didn't like it and so you were disappointed that i was i was really disappointed actually the stalker had lost interest the stalker is no longer even a fan of mine anymore but the song itself is about okay this person's looking like waiting for me outside my house waiting for me to leave wondering what i might do what's the difference between what they think i'm doing inside and what i'm actually doing which is is in fact, extremely unglamorous stuff.

So, well, that this, uh, recurring theme of authenticity and a problem with hypocrisy, do you think that that spills over into your, you seem to kind of have a beef with organized religion, uh, that comes through most clearly in your drunk text message to God, uh, spoken word. Here's the great thing about my church. You keep your religion because my church is for those of us who grew up wishing we believed in an afterlife. And for those of us who were so close to God, we could practically lean over and make out with her. Tell us about your relationship to that. I should say those two things that I believe in are a little bit separate

in that the specific religious line in Ink Don't bleed is about ted haggard the pastor for the new life church who was an anti-gay crusader who was then caught smoking meth with a male prostitute and that hypocrisy spills you know john edwards who's like this family man who's then exposed as a cheater with an outside family and and this thing this this narrative that we hear over and over and over again this narrative that we hear over and over and over again, this idea that like, we expect our politicians to disgrace themselves. That was what that line was about that guy. And so my beef more is with religion that masquerades as something it's not. So churches that are profiting off their congregation, huge mega

churches that are re reeling in tons of bucks are propagating this message, you know, often at the expense of other marginalized groups and then making millions of dollars for their rich pastors who are driving around in Mercedes. And that I have a beef with. I'm not a religious person, but I don't have a beef with people who are passionately religious because I don't know. I can't tell you if there's a God or not. I think there's probably not based on what I believe objectively that I've seen of the world, but I, I don't know. You know, like I can't tell you with absolute certainty, there's not a God, but what I can say is I, I feel like sometimes I can smell a rat. And when I see, um, some super rich pastor, who's leading a giant congregation that looks like a rock concert.

I don't feel like they're even following the teachings of Jesus Christ, which are, you know, about loving people and supporting those in need. And I think there's tons of very empathetic religious people who got into it for all the right reasons and who, for all I know, may hold the key to getting into heaven. And they're going to be laughing at me from the pearly gates. I don't know, but, you know. My beef is more with the fake elements of large organized religion than with actually religion itself. Right. And how does that theme of authenticity,

how does that fit you into the landscape of hip-hop in general, which is about a lot of pomp and circumstance and image? There's definitely always examples of rappers who break that mold. But in some ways, I think that maybe it limits my growth. And if I fit a more poppy image that maybe I would earn a lot more fans and be able to be on the radio. And if I had a look, you know, I don't have that. I'm going to wear what I feel comfortable in and act how I feel comfortable. And that might mean that I am relegated to a more niche fandom for the rest of my career, but I guess only time will tell. But I would rather have the industry and success

come to me where I'm at than try and fit myself to something that feels very ingenuine. And then in a best case scenario, having to live with a bunch of success that I feel like I earned falsely or in a worst case scenario, failing and then having to deal with being a faker who is unsuccessful and a fraud, you know, so. Well, I feel like at this point, I could close things down by asking, can you teach me how to rap fast?

I'm not gonna ask that question. I don't mind. But how do you feel about that question? I don't mind, and I should say like the fast rap stuff even though the fact that I was associated with it I still do it at my shows I'm still proud that I'm able to do that but that's technique and skill to me

but that's not how you move people and tell a story but with that being said I'm proud of being a technician and I can tell you exactly what I think the building blocks to being a good fast rapper are. but before you do that, so let me get it straight. It,

it seems like you called it the gravy. You called it not an essential part, but isn't it an essential part of what you do? That probably varies from person to person, depending on what is the most. for you as an artist, in terms of when you approach a song, are you like,

I'm going for it here? Yeah. That's how, that's how I, I'm going for it here? Yeah. That's how I approached Whoa, Whoa, Whoa. And in some ways, that was the attention getter song that I was trying to get people to listen to the rest of the album. I've kind of viewed my material in subversive ways of, you know, I believe that there's nothing wrong with being an entertainer. That's not a dirty word to me.

For a lot of poets and a lot of writers, they view entertainment as a cheap form of art or not even art at all. I love entertaining people. And to entertain people, you have to acknowledge your audience's expectations and try and meet them halfway with something. I'm not a therapeutic writer who says I'm writing only for myself and I don't acknowledge my audience. I think acknowledging your audience is a respectful thing because being a writer is a conversation between you and another person. You need to be able to communicate to that person and communicating to them in some ways requires acknowledging what do I need to do to get this person to want to listen to me.

And so you, so you engage speed in order to entertain an audience, but not because you want to do it. No, I don't have any, I do like doing it. I was a drummer. The reason, and that's going to be part of how I explain how to do it. Um, I think it's awesome. I love rhythm. I love playing with rhythm. I love playing with rhymes. Um, it's not the fact that it's fast. That's awesome. It's the fact that it's precise and that the rhyme schemes are cool. And in fact, you can rap really, really fast and still sound like ass. If you don't like, if you're not precise with it and your rhyme schemes aren't interesting right and the fact that you can still discern what you're saying is pretty yeah it's about it's about being being like really clear with it which is diction which is so rhythm and diction are the two things that i'm going to explain in a second but but it's like saying to a

singer like being is being on pitch important to you like that's maybe it's it's impossible to separate technique from the meat and potatoes. Well, and before you give Link his lesson, which I will, I will also listen to it so we can apply it to our next rap battle. Here's a sports analogy for you. My perception of it is that fast rapping to you is like the fade away to Jordan. The fade away didn't make Jordan Jordan, but it's kind of the go-to thing

that is kind of like, he does that better than anybody. And if I'm going to have a poster in my room, it's going to be of him doing that. There's actually fans who come to the concert for different things, and I try and always vary it so that everybody who likes different facets of my work

got what they came for. And the majority, I'd say more people definitely, the fast rapping stuff hits them. There's a bigger audience for it. But there is still that contingent of people who say, wow, he's a rapper, but he's the guy who also does some spoken word. So that might be a minority, but yeah, I'm not ashamed. If you want to call me a fast rapper, that's fine.

If that gets you to buy my album and be curious about it and listen to it and it piques your interest and you say, oh, it's actually pretty good, then I'm willing to do a little dance for you if that gets you to listen to my stuff. Well, okay, I'm gonna keep myself in suspense even more with a follow-up question here. If faced with a choice, which would you choose?

If you had to sing karaoke, either one of your own songs amongst friends and strangers or an Eminem song, which would you choose? Oh, Eminem every time. And if faced with another choice, I would pick Alanis Morissette instead of either of them. Because, you know, it's self-indulgent. Like, I don't, I get my fix of my attention. I'm not the guy who's going to show up to the party with a guitar trying to play my own songs. Like, that's just douchey. So yeah, definitely an Eminem song. And, and, and I even think that as a rapper going up and doing rap at karaoke, like,

why would you do that? Get up and sing, sing, build me a buttercup or something. So tell me how to do it. Yeah. I mean, it's two things. It's, it's rhythm and in some ways rhyme scheme is built into rhythm and then clarity. So I would would say because I have a background as a drummer, when I'm writing a fast rap verse, before I even do anything, I'm listening to the beat and I'm trying to figure out what cadence and tempo are right for it. And then beyond that, you have to know that how your rhythm is going to be broken up, but what the stress patterns of it are. So it's not just thinking, okay, there's a rhythm in drumming called second line, which comes out of New Orleans, like jazz music. And it's a syncopated thing. Syncopated means you're putting the stress emphasis on a note that's off of the downbeat. So you're creating forward momentum by basically switching up the rhythm. And second line is a syncopated rhythm that goes. And a lot of the fast rap stuff is a variation on that.

You're creating this really interesting pattern by figuring out what your stress syllables are. So now you have your sort of rhythmic structural pattern, and then you have to figure out what your end rhymes are. So a multi-rhyme, you know, cat, hat, bat, mat, all rhyme with each other. But the multi-rhyme is when more than one syllables

rhyme with each other at the end of a phrase. So let's see. Dog s*** would be like, would rhyme with like log hit and bog pit and frog quit you know there's obviously what you want to do if you're if you're creating a great word group of multi rhymes is have ones that are related to each other so that you can start to see the subject matter link between those end rhymes

and then once you have a bunch of multi rhyme groups that like stack up on the paper you start to figure out okay what are the associations between these phrases? How can I fill in the gap? Because I have to get with the like filler note, digga digga digga digga digga digga bog quit, digga digga digga digga digga digga log s***, digga digga. And then you're figuring out in the filler words, what is going to get you from point A to point B so that your verse makes sense. And so once you have your kind of rough outline of your verse, then you have to figure out what are the trouble spots. And a lot of those fast syllable stuff comes from making sure that you're not sticking too many, cluttering it up with consonants. So if you want that really like machine gun rhythm, like you want percussive consonants in there.

G, B, D, K are more percussive than M, N, R, L. So if you have a word that ends with a vowel and the next word starts with a consonant, you don't want to end your word with a consonant and then start the next word with another consonant. That means that your mouth has to change positions to get to the next thing. Because then in the space of a nanosecond, you have to get your mouth from an R sound to an S-T,

you know, S-H-T sound that it's a lot to clutter it up with. You want to go consonant, vowel, consonant, vowel, consonant, vowel, so you can get this really like machine gun pattern. You could have charged a lot of money for this. There's a lot of inside baseball to this. And I'm going to say it because I think, you know, if you want to go for it and practice it, it just takes a lot of time. So more power to you. Yeah, step one is understanding, which could take listening to that a number of times. And then so then it's addiction.

I was very lucky to be a theater student and to figure out, you know, red leather, yellow leather, red leather, yellow leather, unique New York, unique New York. You know, clarity is so important. Making sure that if you have trouble spots in your verse that you're addressing them. You get in the shower and you just do your shit 30 times in a row. And you need to be so confident to be able to nail it every time that your mom could be showing naked pictures of you as a baby to your biggest crush in the background. And you're so focused that you could do it a million times in a row.

So that's pretty much it. It's as easy as that. It's as easy as that. That's what I got. We'll close with this. So thanks for humoring us. Oh, no, it's my pleasure. I really, really legitimately don't mind talking about it.

And I get to decide what songs I put on my album, you know, and you guys are helping me slang that to the masses. So, you know, that's what people are going to see my new stuff as. And I'm not ashamed. When fans come up to me after a show and ask me to do the fast rap for them, I gladly do it. If you like that and you love it, then I'm proud because I'm proud that song, that video was successful.

I'm just not going to let it define me for the rest of my life. Yeah. Well, listen, man, thanks for spending this time. This was very enjoyable. Hey, it was fun for me too. Yeah, I really appreciate it. Who doesn't like getting to talk about themselves for a long time? And there it was, our Ear Biscuit with George Watsky. At what point, Link, did you lose track of his explanation about how to rap fast?

Yeah, at some point in there, I was like, okay, so what you're saying is you either got it or you don't. It made sense. I always appreciate it when someone is willing to pull back the curtain. So I'm glad he did that. It was fascinating. It did make me think about our process for writing songs and especially writing raps. I mean, I wanted to ask him.

We didn't quite get to it. But the starting point for us, we've learned more and more, needs to be the jokes. Right. We'll actually write out concepts and jokes before we have any idea of how they rhyme. So then it's just a question of how do we make it fit?

I imagine he has reams of notebook paper where he's creating stacked rhymes. But he obviously starts with a message, too. It's not like he's just... Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not like he's creating stacked rhymes, but he obviously starts with a message too. It's not like he's just, it's not like he's stacking rhymes of all these words sound good together. Let me find a way to make a meaning. But I think the fact is that you can make,

if you have an underlying message, you can make a lot of different words get that message across. And I think it's interesting because you get the idea that he's a technician in the way that he goes about this and that's how it interesting because you get the idea that he's a technician in the way that he goes about this and that's how it sounds when you listen to it whereas I think that I don't think anybody would ever be fooled into thinking and listening to us rap that these guys

are rappers they would say these guys are comedians rapping and and it's funny it's because it is very much based in the approach well and there and there's a- And the skill, the skill level. There's a, I mean, there's a lot of comedy in Watsky's music. Super funny. But I'm trying to figure out what the difference is. There's a different type of comedic timing that we try to employ

that our songs are tooled around lines being jokes. Whereas with him, his lines are tooled around lines being jokes. Whereas with him, his lines are tooled around being more of a technical constraint. And I think that he has funny concepts, but I don't know if he sets it up like a punchline. Like when you have to set up a set up in a punchline, there's a certain amount of comedic timing, literal timing associated with that,

that you can't really invert as well. I mean, so he doesn't do jokes. He does conceptually comedic, ironic, I mean, all different types of ways. He's being funny, but it's not, it's a different type of constraint than the ones we have that are more joke oriented. Well, it's obviously working. And I think that, you know, like we talked about, there is no question from our perspective. But I like the fact that his story does have an important YouTube element. And, you know, we don't think there's anything to be ashamed about. I do understand that in the musical world, there might be people who are like, oh, yeah, the guy who had that YouTube video, that would get under your skin after a while.

But he's more than overcome that. Still overcoming, you know, lots of things like the incident that he's more than overcome that. Still overcoming lots of things, like the incident that he's apologizing for on his latest album, and the epilepsy that he's struggling with now, and how he's bringing those into his lyrics. I'm excited about this album. Hopefully we'll get to see him when he performs in town. Yeah, we're appreciative to George.

Let him know what you think. Show your appreciation by tweeting at him, G. Watsky. Follow him on Twitter. Check out his tour dates on his website, georgewatsky.com. See him in person. We do appreciate the time that he spent with us. Hashtag Ear Biscuits. Let us know what you think as well. You can count on us to be back here next week with another one. We'll be talking at the same pace that we talked this week, maybe slowly getting a little bit faster, thanks to the influence of George.