G-Eazy: A Time Slapsule

G-Eazy by Jessica Butler

I enrolled in Berkeley High School in 2006, which means I missed by a year the most creatively fruitful grade in Berkeley public school history. The class of '05 included both half of The Pack as well as The Cataracs, a coincidence immortalized on their eternal collaboration “Blueberry Afghani.” And then there was G-Eazy. He was a local legend by the time I was a freshman, as much for his success with girls and the time he got in a fight at the McDonalds across from campus as for his mixtapes. Through his work in the Bay Boyz collective and a handful of solo releases—Sikkis On The Planet, The Epidemic, The Tipping Point, The Outsider LP—G-Eazy developed a sneaker-head lothario personality over minimal, party-friendly production, often from his own Slap Doctors crew. Songs like “I Be In The Lab”, “Fresh”, and “Swagger Like Mine” soundtracked our first parties and hotboxes. G-Eazy wore brightly colored skinny jeans, A Tribe Called Quest t-shirt, a thick dookie chain, and glasses with no lenses. If this sounds strange take my word that he embodied a vibe instantly recognizable to anyone who went to high school in the Bay Area during the Bush presidency. This guy, basically. Poised between the fading hyphy movement and the nascent jerk scene, we were based before #based. G-Eazy was a crown prince of the most high nation of Thizzlam.

G-Eazy developed into a more dimensional figure to me when I be-friended his younger brother my junior year. He once described to me his older sibling’s three distinct personas: G-Eazy, the enterprising rapper and producer, a showman and slick self-promoter. G.E., the ladies man. And at home, Gerald: loyal older brother and devoted, humble son to their mother. I’d run into G-Eazy at parties sometimes, home from college at Loyola New Orleans: blunt in his mouth and chain gleaming, he was the coolest person I could conceive of in high school. His old mixtapes provided instant nostalgia for us those first few Winter breaks back home graduation. Every American high school has its rapper. Ours was G-Eazy.

In the spring of 2012, my sophomore year of college in New York, a friend surprised me with a song request. “Put on that new G-Eazy song, ‘Runaround Sue’!” She’s from Brooklyn, and had never to that point displayed any interest in third-wave California swag-rap. When I heard the song I was shocked: the Bay-destrian I knew had become a smooth-talking, hair-slicked quasi-James Dean in a letterman jacket. After matriculating from Loyola (where he majored in music industry studies) G-Eazy executed a flawless triple-salchow rebrand. His new look doubled down on his natural charisma and striking good looks, trading in bright pants and empty glasses frames for a 50's Rat Pack-ish aesthetic. There was that same raspy voice, now scrubbed of Bay signifiers and employed over a smooth soul sample. His transformation reminded me of a “swag is for boys, class is for men” meme. I don’t blame him. You can’t stay 18 forever, and the eccentricities of the time and place in which we came of age belong to that time and place. G-Eazy, high school half a decade behind him, set his sights on a national stage.

Fast forward to last July: I’m sitting in a folding chair in the upper floor of the Apple Store in Soho, watching G-Eazy perform a song called “Tumblr Girls” to a packed audience of teens, parents, industry people, and bemused Apple store employees. He’s wearing a sharp, simple black t-shirt and jeans. His chain, banana-slug width in high school, is now snake-thin. During a pre-show Q+A he genially (and prefends off Macklemore comparisons, and talks about tapping A$AP Ferg for a guest verse on his new album These Things Happen. On stage he’s magnetic, bouncing around while his drummer and DJ turn the Apple Store about as far up as a Soho retail location can go on a weeknight. Several kids in the audience have taken his look to heart: slicked hair and sharp fades gleam in the dim fluorescent light. His triumphant attitude is merited: his album has just shot to #1 on the hip-hop charts and #2 on all of iTunes. It will go on to sell 60,000 copies in a month. For comparison, that’s 10,000 more copies than Trap Lord sold in a year. G-Eazy is a star. With good reason: his songs are as catchy as anything on the radio, with charisma that belies a decade of work in the game. He's Drake with less self-doubt and better cheekbones. G-Eazy reminds me of the iPods for sale all around us: sleek, user-friendly, and appealing to teens. He's boiled down his persona into a widely accessible, geographically abstract, and user-friendly hip-hop experience.

G-Eazy at the Apple Store. Photo by Bobby Bruderle

When I walk backstage before the show, G-Eazy is sitting a table, surrounded by his social media team. “If they want me to talk about branding, I can do that for hours,” he’s telling a young woman with Facebook analytics open on her laptop. He sees me across the room: we haven’t seen each other in years, but the recognition is instantaneous. He offers me a swig of the brandy he’s warming himself up for his set with. Here’s our conversation.

Noisey: So can you confirm that you did in fact get in a fight at the Shattuck Avenue McDonalds?

G-Eazy: That was real. That was hella classic, they wouldn’t let us into Mcdonalds for a year.

What was it like going to school with The Pack?
The Pack hit. I think that was the single most inspiring thing ever. I’d known Lil Uno for years, so seeing him go from next to me in class and onto MTV, it was wild.

Did you ever sell mixtapes on the corner?
Hell yeah, I used to stand on Telegraph Ave. That’s what it was back then, having people stand out there with a backpack full of CDs trying to hustle and talk to strangers, getting them to support local hip-hop.

Let’s talk about your first mixtape I ever listened to, The Tipping Point.
Man, that wasn’t even the first mixtape. Hell no, it was the Bay Boyz, feel me? I don’t know, man. I’ll tell you the difference between hip-hop and playing trumpet, like my brother does. It's that your practice years are pretty documented. You know what I mean? Whereas he’s just about to graduate from being a music major all through college, and he’s been playing since fourth grade. And now he’s like, oh shit, can I be in an orchestra? Where like, as a hip-hop artist ten years in I’m having my first album out, after all these years of practicing and paying dues and honing your craft. But the thing is all these mixtapes exist on the internet. And like anything else, it just takes time to get good at, unless you’re just innately amazing.

I like those mixtapes a lot. "I Be In The Lab"still slaps.
Thank you man, that’s crazy. But yeah, everything’s been moving towards this moment. This is like, “Alright, finally I have something that’s in stores, that’s hella thought out and put together.” It’s a real album. I hate doing the same thing over and over again. In any creative field it’s important to take steps, turn quarters, take risks and just grow, and try new shit. "Runaround Sue", with the 50’s slicked back hair shit, was the first song that slipped. When I flipped that song it formulated, it clicked. I was like, "Yo, if I chop these samples from 50’s and 60’s pop songs, and run with that for a whole project, that could be a dope concept album. It was the first thing in my career that ever clicked, and I realized how important image was. If Nicki Minaj didn’t have an ass, or Eminem didn’t bleach his hair blond, would they be as famous and widely known? It takes an image to get in the door.

You need a hook.
Period. And I never thought it was something I wanted to do forever, it was something I wanted to run with for this music video and this mixtape. And that was what seperated me from every white internet rapper with a fucking snapback and sneakers and streetwear.

The gold chain and the empty glasses?
That was before that. That was the hyphy shit. When I got to New Orleans, I had my fucking dookie rope chain and the big glasses with no lenses, and that was just some shit we were wearing in the bay. Looking hella goofy with a big-ass white tee, and some Forces or Bapes, and big-ass jeans. And then everybody in New Orleans was like "Who the fuck is this dude, what are you wearing and listening to?"

Hyphy is a hard energy to translate outside of the Bay.
I feel like every kid that grew up where we grew up has such a pride in our culture and our genre and our region that when we get into college we just want to put everyone onto it. Everyone I ever met that knew a kid from the bay in college has that same story. Like, in the dorms they would play nothing but hyphy slap, and everbody would react like, "What the fuck are you talking about, what the fuck are you playing and what slang are you using?"

Wow, that was aboslutely me Freshman year of college. What was your most definitive hyphy memory from high school?
The first time I heard "Tell Me When To Go." That was an instantaneous reaction: "Wow, this arrived right on time and this is about to break out of the Bay. Its about to be the biggest song in the Bay, like anthemic, what takes our shit outside of the Bay." 'Cause the thing is that the Bay’s always been that bubble, where you turn on 106.1 KMEL and you can’t tell the difference between E-40 and Jay-Z cause they’re on the radio all the time. But if you drive anywhere else, it’s not the same. It’s a trip, when I went to New Orleans and no one knew who Keak Da Sneak was, itIwas like what? This guy’s a superstar.

So I heard there’s a billboard of you up at the corner of St. Pablo and University [downtown Berkeley intersection].
That was a pure flex move. They were like, "What, you want to put what on a billboard? That’s gonna sell no records." But to me it was just a statement. I put up a billboard back home just to do it, just for the fuck of it. And it’s so cool, my mom drove past it and took a picture, it’s sick.

Tell me about the 50’s aesthetic.
One thing I’ve always been into creatively is this idea of juxtaposition of two totally different worlds and creating something new. In the case of taking a 50’s sample, and 808 drums, and a rapper slicking his hair back, I like that contrast. Growing up in the bay there’s such a diverse melting pot of cultures. We're used to being able to walk that line.

You did the Warped Tour a few years ago, what was that like?

Here’s the thing man, I’m an outsider at heart. And being able to stand in this world or that world are what makes me me. Like doing Warped Tour one summer and a Lil Wayne and 2 Chainz tour the next. The Wayne tour was all the way on the right, Warped was on the left. You just have to fucking hustle. Like all you kids probably aren’t into hip-hop, but I’m gonna fucking perform everyday. It was weird, but it was kind of like bootcamp for touring. If you could survive Warped Tour you could survive anything. It was gnarly and weird as fuck, but that shit was tight.

What's your favorite show you've ever done?
In the Bay with Kid Cudi, and I brought out E-40. He came out and did "Far Alone", and then he dropped "Tell Me When To Go." I’m telling you, I almost wanted to cry on stage. So emotional, everyone just went dumb. The whole place, sold out, it felt like a mini-arena, and they just lost their minds. That record is ten years old.

Tell me about writing These Things Happen.
I wrote a lot of it on tour. So that’s why it’s like whisky, girls, party, cause that’s the environment I was surrounded by on the Lil Wayne tour last summer. I would be so bummed out every day, I was the opener with a ten minute set and I was like, this sucks. If you don’t like where you at it comes down to content, so go make some shit that will change things. I’d be in the studio every day.

What advice would you give to kids learning how to create an image in our modern media environment?
The biggest thing is you have to be yourself. Nothing is more obvious than being ingenuine, and I think everyone sees through bullshit. At the same time, you have to find a way of doing something different. Cut through the noise. It can’t just be the image, it has to be the sound and the music too. Be yourself but do something that sets you apart. Everyone has a laptop, microphone, and a soundcloud account so what the fuck makes you different?

Ezra Marcus is currently naked except for a XXXL Bape hoodie he's wearing as a bathrobe. He's on Twitter - @ezra_marc

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