After strolling around a rainy Temple Bar, G-Eazy is gearing up to playing his first ever show in Dublin, a sold out gig at The Olympia Theatre. It's in the middle of a run of touring that will see him play something in the region of 200 shows in the space of a year. Fortunately, he still loves the live experience.
From Oakland, California, G-Eazy - full name Gerald Earl Gillum - started out as a producer, making a name for himself on his local hip hop scene before he turned to being an artist himself. His rise to fame in Europe is echoing that which he has already gained in the States, returning to playing clubs after playing arenas over there. “It feels good coming back and playing clubs. […] I get more excited when it’s a club because you’re right there, and it’s sweaty and its loud.” He’s already been there and done that stateside, making a point that it has all come naturally. “We’ve been touring in the States for longer, it’s all been organic. In the states we were playing to 100, 200, 300 people in small, tiny, sweaty clubs that was how we started in the states, before we could afford to come over here. So it’s like a year or two behind but it’s fun to go back and play to these rooms again.”
Speaking about differences between the crowds, G-Eazy seems to favour the reaction he has been getting in Europe, “They’ve got more energy out here and they give less fucks. They mosh, they sweat, they don’t give a fuck. And the capacities are more accurate out here. You see in the States, they’ll say per square foot for fire code we can allow this many people in the venue and a lot of times it’s not very accurate and there’s all this open space with people cramped to the front. Here, I mean it’s fully like sardines in the building they fit everyone in they can. People on stairways, people climbing on ropes, people all the way to the back, and it’s just been great energy every night.”
His last album, ‘When It’s Dark Out’ has gained critical and commercial success. G-Eazy explains how the momentum of his debut album - ‘These Things Happen’ - helped to spur on the writing of his last one. “I came off of touring the last album and just got straight into the studio to start writing this one. I didn’t really take any breaks to decompress or rest I just went straight into it. And I think the biggest thing was the momentum, building off the momentum of the last record and going straight into this one and just realising the window that was open for me, the people that believed in me were behind me and what we were doing they wanted to support us at the label and worldwide and just realising the opportunity we had and making the most of it.
"I just make songs." he explains. "You go into the studio and just make what you make, you can’t force anything, you can’t manufacture anything. You just go in there with people that you fuck with, artists that you like and you make what you make.”
Single, Me Myself and I featuring Bebe Rexha has gained a lot of success and a lot of radio play, and although G-Eazy had a feeling there was something about the song that may make it a success, he was reluctant to assume it would be. “I had a feeling when we made My, Myself and I... that this might be a big record that this might reach the world, but you can never predict that kind of thing.”
‘When Its Dark Out’ contains a lot of collaborations with other artists, such as Big Sean, Kelhani, Grace, among many others. These collaborations are a mixture of songs being written with the idea of having a certain artist take part, whilst sometimes it just happens. “Say One Of Them, the third song on the album, I made that in Atlanta and I heard the beat and as soon as it played I freestyled the chorus, I went in to record it, I wrote the verse, I cut them, and we were listening to the song back and we were like “yo, Big Sean would kill this.” I had met Big Sean a couple months prior and he was really cool, really down to earth, and he showed a lot of love so I figured, “what the hell, I’ll text him: “I got this record I think you’d sound great on”” so I sent it to him and he killed it.
But sometimes, "it’s on the spot," G-Eazy says. "Say like Tory Lanez, we were in the studio working on some stuff and made Drifting right there. He’s a genius, it just came out of him. “
The album also contain songs like Everything Will Be Okay, an in-depth song about G-Eazy’s family situation growing up, and although it was a scary thing to do, he couldn’t let himself think about the audience because he felt like he needed to write the song. “I’m telling a story that I had never told to anybody, publicly on a record that has been sold half a million times, has been heard and streamed millions of times. That’s crazy. I just couldn’t let myself think about that when I made it, I think that would have crippled the creativity. I just went in and committed to letting myself go there for the first time. I had never done that. And I just think that’s the power of music, as a writer it’s a therapeutic outlet, as a listener it’s therapeutic in the sense that it lets you know that you’re not the only one that might be going through something, you identify with the artist and what they’re going through.”
Although G-Eazy takes inspiration from everything and his wide ranging music taste, the most important inspirations are your own experiences. “I’m always constantly inspired but when you go to write something it’s always coming from you, you only lived your live, you only have your point of view, your perspective, your story to tell."
G-Eazy has a heavy touring schedule ahead of him in the coming months, yet by changing up the set from night to night - catering it to the specific audience, asking locals what songs are on the radio the most - he tries to keep it interesting. “The nature of a hip hop show is that you’re playing with a DJ so that’s a recorded track, it’s not like you’re playing with the Dave Matthews Band, where they can jam for 45 minutes on one song and create something that’s never existed before. You’re playing the same songs over and over, it’s repetitive by nature. So it creates challenges of how to keep it fresh, keep it new, make it different every single night. When this tour is over, in September/October, I will have played 160-175 shows, maybe even 200 this year alone, so how do you make it new and existing every single night? You gotta find a way.”
There are, of course, some nights where it gets tiresome, but for the most part G-Eazy is still loving what he is doing. “You have nights that are hella exiting where all of a sudden it feels new again. I guess it’s like having sex. If you date someone for years and years and years you’ve had sex over 1,000 times, how do you keep it interesting? You gotta do it.
"It’s still awesome," he repeats. "I’m still in love with what I do. No matter how routine or repetitive it might start to feel, when I test the stage and the song comes on this magic happens. I black out. It’s like going through a trance. I think it’s just how special it is. I’m in this entirely new city, across the world from where the song was created and there’s people who give a fuck about what I do, that’s tight. That doesn’t get old.”
From the show that he put on in The Olympia, it still seems pretty clear that G-Eazy belongs on stage, with the crowd hanging on to every word he says and screaming back the lyrics to him. There seems to be no doubt that although he may be playing smaller venues here now than in the States, it’s only a matter of time before that all changes.