George Watsky
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About Watsky
George Watsky is a poet/rapper originally from San Francisco, California, now located in Los Angeles. His career in both rap and poetry began when he was 15 after witnessing Def Poetry Jam, a television show dedicated to spoken word poets. Watsky says, "From that moment forward, I was just in love with that art form and I've never stopped doing it." 1 Watsky eventually got to perform on the last season of the show.
Watsky since has been performing spoken word poetry at various festivals, poetry competitions, and colleges across the United States.
As for Watsky's rap career, he has collaborated with several producers to create full length albums, such as 2007's "Invisible Inc." with San Francisco producers Daniel Riera and Max Miller-Loran. His first solo EP entitled "Watsky" was released on November 1, 2009. The album started with few sales. On August 3, 2010, he released "Guilty Pleasures," a collaboration with producer Procrastination in which vocals from "Watsky" were mashed up with instrumentals of songs that can be considered "guilty pleasures," such as Hips Don't Lie by Shakira and Wyclef Jean, Ante Up by MOP, Beat It by Michael Jackson, and several others.
Pale Kid Raps Fast
On January 17, 2011, Watsky uploaded the above video to YouTube. It features Watsky performing a speed rap in his bedroom over the instrumental for Busta Rhymes's song, "Break Ya Neck." The video grew due to a post on Reddit by his roommate and gained over 100,000 views the day it was uploaded. The video now has over 10 million views, over 50,000 comments, and over 125,000 likes.
Mac Lethal and MC Silk
Other rappers saw this as an opportunity to get their name out. Case in point, Missouri rapper Mac Lethal posted the above video, "Pale Kid Raps Faster," four days after Watsky's video was uploaded. The video features him performing his own speed rap over the same instrumental. His video also gained popularity, with over 2.5 million views as of July 2011.
Another equally viral response to Watsky's video is by Polish rapper MC Silk. In this video, Silk performs his own speed rap with new additions, such as rapping in his native language and increasing the tempo of the original instrumental by 10% percent. The video has gained over 2 million views since it's upload. Silk also increased the tempo by 25 percent in a separate video. That video has over 400,000 views.
Other Derivatives
Others saw just performing the original rap as a challenge in itself. Countless covers of Watsky's rap can be found throughout YouTube.
Those with increased melanin production made changes to the title.
Watsky's Subsequent Success
Due to "Pale Kid Raps Fast's" sudden popularity, Watsky almost immediately acquired interviews with the likes of CBS, Carson Daly, and Ellen Degeneres.
Watsky's album also benefited off of the video's success. Referring to the comments on the album on iTunes, Watsky says, ".. It's not until six months ago (from an interview in July 2011) that it explodes." 2 "Watsky" eventually reached as high as number 7 on the iTunes hip hop album charts.
Watsky continues to make music and perform spoken word. He plans to release a mixtape entitled "A New Kind of Sexy," on August 1, 2011.
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