Meet G-Eazy: A Rapper Who Outsells Phish But Is Still ‘Almost Famous’
Jamil Davis, co-manager of rapper G-Eazy, bursts through a dressing room door on NBC’s 8th floor with exciting news.
“They just approved,” he says. “You can say ‘bitch’ and ‘slut.'”
The rules of late-night TV are justifiably a little foreign to 25-year-old Gerald “G-Eazy” Gillum, a six-foot-four white guy who looks less like an emerging Bay Area rapper and more like a chiseled, slick, Fifties retro-rebel from a Lana Del Ray video. Today’s appearance on Late Night With Seth Meyers is his first on national television — currently his highest traditionally demarcated signpost of “fame” in a seven-year career obsessed with attaining it. How high this crescendo will go is still anybody’s guess, but success hasn’t eluded G-Eazy. His debut album These Things Happen (released indie but distro’d via RED) debuted at Number Three, handily outselling new releases from established, media-dominating acts like Phish, Mastodon, Ab-Soul and Riff Raff. A whopping eight of his music videos can boast more than 2 million views on YouTube. The outlets that generally cover hip-hop generally don’t cover him, and he has yet to see a print feature from a major magazine, but regularly sells out shows across the country.
TV, however, is a new challenge. Eazy couldn’t sleep that well last night and didn’t sleep the night before. He says he’s experiencing shakiness and has a weakness in his stomach, but he doesn’t seen especially nervous, sinking into a chair, legs and arms splayed. “Oh God, I’m fucking shaking in my boots right now. I’m as cold as ice and I’m going to knock it out of the park but I’m nervous as fuck,” he says. “It’s all muscle memory. I’ve played so many shows. I’ve probably performed more than most rappers at this stage of my career,” he adds. “I’ve played over 250 shows for sure, four 40-day tours… Whatever, this is all familiar territory, this is just a different platform.”
Since 2007, G-Eazy built from the ground up, starting with a splash of MySpace virality around the saccharine Auto-Tune trifle “Candy Girl” and slowly evolving into his current minimalist aesthetic, constructing a hyphy-centric sound and building a dedicated audience the old-fashioned way — touring relentlessly, working hard and dreaming big. You can witness the discipline of Gillum and the Eazy machine as he sound-checks. For the second chorus of the bounce-woozer “Far Alone,” Eazy puts his hand to his right ear. Is this an “I can’t hear you” to the hypothetical audience or an “I can’t hear my monitor” to a very real soundman? As he runs through the song a fifth and sixth time, it becomes clear, yes, this is instinctual. Co-manager Matt Bauerschmidt approaches Eazy and HBK Gang’s Jay Ant (he’s helping on the chorus), and suggests how to time their giddy mid-song jumps. Back in the green room, Davis approaches Ant and says — like a command, not a suggestion — “We got ‘bitch’ cleared for a reason, so you gotta say it.” Indeed, when the explosive performance airs on Seth Meyers that evening, you can see G-Eazy’s hand to his ear, the timed pogo and hear Jay Ant’s swears.