Watsky

George Virden Watsky (born September 15, 1986) is an American rapper, singer, songwriter, record producer, poet, author, and illustrator. Watsky broke out as a rapper with his viral video "Watsky raps fast" in 2011, which featured his trademark chopping style. He has released seven studio albums: Watsky (2009), Cardboard Castles (2013), All You Can Do (2014), x Infinity (2016), Complaint (2019), Placement (2020), and Intention (2023). He performs live shows with a backing band called Créme Fraîche. He is also known for his appearances in episodes of Epic Rap Battles of History, and as an author following the publication of How to Ruin Everything in 2016. On May 7, 2020, Watsky set the Guinness World Record for longest rapping marathon, rapping for 33 hours 33 minutes and 19 seconds. Also known for his slam poetry, he was featured on Season 6 of Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry. George Virden Watsky was born in San Francisco, California, on September 15, 1986, the son of librarian Clare E. (née Miller) and psychotherapist Paul Norman Watsky. His maternal grandfather was Democratic politician Clement Woodnutt Miller. He has a brother who is a pilot and has described himself as "half Jewish" on his father's side. Watsky attended San Francisco University High School and Emerson College in Boston. He majored in Writing and Acting for the Screen and Stage, a program he designed through the Interdisciplinary Studies Program at Emerson. His talents began to receive national and international acclaim in 2006 when he was the Youth Speaks Grand Slam Poetry Champion, and was also named Brave New Voices International Poetry Slam Champion. Watsky started slam poetry at the age of 15. As a teen, he won around a dozen slams in the Bay Area, and was on the team that took fourth place in the national contest in 2005. Watsky's poetry incorporates political and social themes. In 2006, in the midst of a lively performance to a sold-out crowd, Watsky likened politicians' behavior to a common bar pick-up line, and won the night's top score. He also appeared in Season Six, Episode Two of Def Poetry Jam that year, performing his poem "V for Virgin." Reviewing a 2008 performance at Brandeis University, Sarah Bayer wrote, "Skinny, quirky George Watsky was next, with the night's most innovative piece. Watsky, a sophomore at Emerson College and a member of the grand prize-winning team from San Francisco at the National Youth Poetry Slam in 2006, adjusted the microphone to different parts of his body, imitated the sound of rewinding tape and recited binary code (a trope that caught the eye of headliner Saul Williams) in an altogether amusing performance." In 2009, he was also profiled in The Boston Globe; the Arts section reviewed his one-man show "Where the Magic Happens" favorably, and called him a "poetry-slam star." Watsky continues to implement spoken word into his current career as a musician with songs like "Tiny Glowing Screens Pt. 1-3", "Cannonball.", “Springtime in New York” and “Dreams & Boxes”. In 2009, Watsky produced a 15-track hip hop album titled Watsky. The next year, he released the album Guilty Pleasures, which he made available as a free download on his website. Produced by Procrastination (San Francisco musician Tobias Butler), Guilty Pleasures contains mashups between popular songs and those from his first album. On January 17, 2011, Watsky uploaded a video entitled "Pale kid raps fast" to YouTube, in which he performed a humorous original rap with rapid delivery over the instrumental of "Break Ya Neck" by Busta Rhymes. The video went viral, partly due to support from Reddit and Philip DeFranco (Watsky's music can be heard in the background of DeFranco's news series and SourceFed channel).[citation needed] It accumulated four million views within two days, and eventually exceeded 25 million views despite later being unlisted by Watsky and the title being changed to "Watsky raps fast." He performed a slightly modified version of the rap on The Ellen DeGeneres Show one week later. Being able to match the speed of the song's rapping was viewed as an Internet challenge, spawning covers by fellow rappers such as Mac Lethal, and YouTube celebrities such as Hank Green and Bry. On June 10, 2012, Watsky released a free mixtape entitled Nothing Like The First Time. The mixtape coincided with his first official tour of the same name beginning in July, featuring his touring band Créme Fraîche, with support from Dumbfoundead. It included dates in Chicago, New York City, Boston, Northampton, Jacksonville, Atlanta, Toronto, and London. Watsky released Live! At the Troubadour, a fully mixed concert CD of his Los Angeles show from the Nothing Like The First Time tour, in August 2012. He also started a production company with Brad Simpson called Steel Wool Media. In January 2013, Watsky announced he would be releasing a new album entitled Cardboard Castles on March 12, 2013. On the same date, he announced tour dates for the Cardboard Castles tour, which included dates in many major cities in the U.S. and Canada such as Austin, New Orleans, Gainesville, Orlando, D.C., Philadelphia, Northampton, Boston, Denver, Los Angeles, Toronto, Vancouver and New York City. Tour dates for Europe (including the UK, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Belgium and the Netherlands) were released shortly after. The first single from the album, "Strong As An Oak" was released through Steel Wool Media on January 22, 2013. The second single from the album, "Moral of the Story" was released on February 5, 2013. The third single, "Hey, Asshole" was released on February 19, 2013, and features English singer Kate Nash. The album was released on March 12, 2013, through Welk Music Group, topping the iTunes Hip Hop Charts in the US, Canada, and the United Kingdom due in part to a Twitter campaign. He then went on his follow-up to the Nothing Like The First Time tour called "Sloppy Seconds." Watsky made a web-series with YouTube channel LOUD titled Watsky's Making an Album. It consisted of 9 main episodes and many behind the scenes and live videos from the Nothing Like The First Time tour. The web series was restarted on March 12, 2013, with the first episode of Season 2 (entitled Watsky's Releasing An Album), coinciding with the release of his second album, Cardboard Castles. In November 2013 the Vans Warped Tour was briefly shut down after Watsky made a stage jump from the 35 ft high rigging during the band's performance in London. During the stage jump the audience parted. Watsky and also two members of the audience were injured. Watsky apologized after the event via Facebook. On January 2, 2014, Watsky tweeted that he was beginning work on his third studio album, then tweeted a link to a picture of a microphone with the caption "The Booth #guardianangel" less than a minute later. This was the first sign of new music from Watsky since March 2013, when he released his second album, Cardboard Castles. On May 21, 2014, during one of his Watsky Wednesday vlogs, he announced that the title of his new album would be All You Can Do, as well as explaining that he wanted to keep his family ties in the album (announcing that his father would be on the cover and that he would like his mother to be on an alternate cover) and that the album would be released in August. He had tweeted earlier in the month that the first single from All You Can Do would be released on June 10, 2014. The album was made available for preorder on June 10, 2014, on iTunes (with a download of the first single," Whoa Whoa Whoa"); a physical copy and limited edition double-vinyl were made available for pre-order on his website. It included collaborations with Anderson .Paak, Dia Frampton and Stephen Stills among others, and is Watsky's highest-charting album to date, reaching number 33 on the Billboard 200. The All You Can Do Tour spanned across North America, Europe, and Australia, consisting of over 60 headlining shows. His live band