When Did G Easy New Album Comeout
G-Eazy is not shy about rattling off his accomplishments.
In the seven years since releasing his first album for a major label, the Oakland rapper born Gerald Earl Gillum has scored top-10 hits, headlined festivals, dated models, walked runways and had more than a few run-ins with the law. He has ticked all the requisite boxes to earn rock star status.
Yet his success is weighed down by all the fallout associated with those exact things that have made him a star — from relentlessly getting hounded by the tabloids to struggling to find the balance between intoxication and overindulgence.
His spectacular rise to fame is going to make a great movie someday. In the meantime, the 32-year-old artist continues to lay out the ups and downs of his career in his music.
G-Eazy's fourth and latest album, "These Things Happen Too," out Friday, Sept. 24, is a sequel to his platinum-selling 2014 debut, "These Things Happen." It was produced mostly while living in the isolation of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, retraining himself on the basics of making music.
The downtime also afforded the 6-foot-4 rapper space to take a broad look at what he has gone through since then — as someone who first picked up a microphone while attending Berkeley High School and found his way out into the world through MySpace.
On the single "Breakdown," he pairs up with former Disney star Demi Lovato, and the duo tears through the headlines that haunt them as public figures. It's just a taste of the dark depths G-Eazy reaches for on the full-length album, which includes appearances from Lil Wayne, Matt Shultz from Cage the Elephant and others.
The Chronicle caught up with G-Eazy by phone from his Tuscan villa in the Hollywood Hills shortly after he performed at the BottleRock Napa Valley music festival, where he FaceTimed with his mother, Suzanne Olmsted, in the middle of his set and earlier in the day played beer pong with Ayesha Curry.
"This is my purpose," he told his fans.
Q: Being in lockdown must have been tough for you after seven years of going nonstop. But did you appreciate having some time out of the spotlight?
A: It was definitely good. The way we've established our process for the last seven years or so, there are very few vacations or breaks or gaps when you get to unplug. It was great to come up for air. All of a sudden it felt like the world was standing still.
Q: You used the time to work on your new album. But you also released a handful of covers of songs by artists like Bob Dylan, Radiohead and the xx. What was that time like, creatively?
A: It was a unique chance to just explore things in an entirely new way. I was on my own and I just jumped at the opportunity to make the most of it. I spent a lot of time learning how to play piano, taking vocal lessons and trying to relearn how to produce and engineer and put records together on my own. That was all I had. When you're stripped of all the tools in your tool belt, you have to learn to make do.
Q: Did you feel a restlessness in your bones? You don't seem like the kind of person who typically goes to bed before 10 p.m.
A: It was a little bit dizzying at first. I don't think I spent more than a week inside at a time in my house since I bought it. I got to the point where I didn't unpack my suitcases because I was never here long enough. My house felt more like a hotel.
But after the first week or two of the pandemic passed and we all got a better understanding that this thing wasn't going to be a two-week break, that we were facing something much longer and much bigger and more complicated, there was a bit of a sense of relief. I got the chance to settle in for kind of the first time and try to decide how I wanted to use the time and what areas I wanted to experiment in or grow in.
Q: You dealt with much of your trauma and the duality of your career on your last album, 2017's "The Beautiful & Damned." Were you surprised to see it resurface on this one?
A: Yeah. Everything is relative. It's been a constant. I always try to make a concerted effort at keeping perspective and reminding myself of the positives and how extremely fortunate I am to be in this position. It's an extremely hard industry to succeed in. To ultimately get to do what I love to do for a living is even rarer. There's a lot of joy that comes with this.
But for all the highs, there are also excruciating lows. It's a very vulnerable pathway to choosing life. There are not many curtains you can close to the windows that the outside world looks through.
But at the same time, developing a voice and the ability to express yourself through it can be therapeutic and cathartic.
Q: The thing about being a public figure is you want to get your art out there but there is a lot of noise that comes with being a celebrity. Do you worry the headlines sometimes crowd out the music?
A: I look at it this way: Music is a pathway, a language, a connector, a force that can bring a whole lot of people together. A whole lot of people can find commonalities and share experiences through it.
I'm a pretty complex, nuanced person. I mean, growing up in the Bay, being exposed to all different types of culture, music, art forms and growing into the person I have become, it's not like you can fit all that into 3 minutes and 30 seconds. And it's a lot harder to fit it into a photo or a headline or an elevator pitch. There's a lot of complexities there.
But that's the beauty of art. I take my views and values and inspirations and influences and perspectives, and I find my way to push all that through the connector, the vehicle that I have, that's through music.
Q: In what ways is this album similar to — and different from — your first one?
A: If you're going to do a sequel, I've always felt like it should represent some connection to the original. It's finding certain songs on the first album that stood out as important moments that were thematically represented. It's what that album was about and where I was at — mentally, personally and creatively — and finding ways to circle to those topics and circle back to the state of mind I was in.
I went back to the same Airbnb that I recorded the first one. I worked with a lot of people that I made the first one with. I looked at certain songs that stood out to me that felt like some of the defining moments that gave the first one its voice. I wanted to find a way to reference those without making the same thing again.
I think the first one represented youthful ambition of what it feels like to be fearless and wide-eyed, looking up at the sky and having dreams of taking this whole thing out into the universe.
Then it actually happened, the overnight success part. For the last seven years, life became almost everything that I set out for it to become.
I thought about buying my mom a house. I thought about touring the world. I thought about going platinum. I thought about bringing people from the Bay out on tour with me. I thought about transcending and taking it to all these places.
Three albums later a lot of that actually happened. So the idea with this one is to comment on that full-circle journey of blasting a spaceship out in space and then coming back home with a story to tell.
Things have improved immeasurably, but ultimately the idea or the mission is staying true to yourself and not letting outside energy, adversity penetrate through my inner psyche and my inner commitment to that vision. To stay true to yourself and not compromise no matter how much pressure is put on you. To take it as far as you can doing it by your rules.
"These Things Happen Too" available to purchase and stream beginning Friday, Sept. 24.
Source: https://datebook.sfchronicle.com/music/g-eazy-on-his-new-album-for-all-the-highs-there-are-also-excruciating-lows
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