Rapper G-Eazy’s career on the rise
By all accounts, G-Eazy has had an excellent past couple of years: the San Francisco rapper’s 2014 major-label debut album, “These Things Happen,” landed at No. 3 on the Billboard 200; his latest work, last month’s “When It’s Dark Out,” sold more than 100,000 copies in its first week.
In the interim, he’s played nearly every major festival from Lollapalooza to Bonnaroo and Outside Lands. Despite it all, the soft-spoken MC still views himself as an underdog. “I’ve always thought of myself as an outsider,” G-Eazy (born Gerald Gillum) says via phone from New York. “I guess I’ve always had a chip on my shoulder. Maybe that just comes from growing up differently and never really fitting in anywhere. Just kind of doing my own thing.”
What’s remained constant over the past decade is G-Eazy unveiling a steady stream of music. By his count, the rapper has released 15 projects to date — beginning with “pure trash” mixtapes he recorded while still a student at Berkeley High School, followed in quick succession by a deluge of additional mixtapes and EPs. By the time he signed with RCA Records, in 2014, G-Eazy had carved himself into something of an Internet sensation as a selfmade artist who built a rabid fan base by constantly pounding the pave-
“Even overnight sensations take years and years.” — G-Eazy, above
ment, using his charm and good looks to attract a female audience, all the while being unafraid to evolve his sound and style.
“I just stuck with it,” says Eazy, whose new album thrives on its minimalist sonic aesthetic and confessional lyrics. “There were probably seven or eight years before any music actually caught on. It’s all part of the process. Things don’t happen by accident. Even overnight sensations take years and years. I look at music as any other creative field: You have to push yourself to develop your craft, to improve your technique, your perspective.”
As a teenager growing up in the Bay Area with a single mom who worked two teaching jobs, the now-26-year-old Gillum gravitated toward music — and more specifically hiphop — out of his and his friends’ love of making beats and writing rhymes. With MySpace and other self-promotional platforms growing ever popular for aspiring musicians at the time, Eazy grew enchanted by the viral fame he witnessed others achieving — most notably, his high school classmates the Pack, who recorded the hit song “Vans.”
Today, G-Eazy has achieved a level of notoriety he could only have imagined back then. And he’s making his most openly honest, jarring music yet. “When you let people in like that, they connect with you on a whole other level,” he said.