Gee Watts prepares two new releases
Gee Watts picks me up in his silver sedan, but the vehicle carrying us is the talkative, articulate rapper’s swift train of thought.
We get on Interstate 35 heading north, and Watts warms up with several topics he finds important in life. He’s tilted back in his seat, steering mainly with his knees, chain-smoking a pack of Camel Crushes. Authenticity, that’s important — the only two people who inspire in him “fanatic” devotion are LeBron James and Kendrick Lamar, he says, and that’s due to their authenticity. Both display excellence in their trades, he says, and both stick to their moral codes.
But ask him who writes better lyrics than the authentic and important Lamar, and he’ll tell you: Gee Watts.
“If you put up my lyrics on the wall of what I wrote on [his forthcoming release] Caviart and you put up the lyrics to Damn, Good Kid, M.A.A.d City or even To Pimp a Butterfly,” Watts tells me, “nine times out of 10, niggas gon’ be like, ‘Yeah, this is the one Kendrick wrote.’ Nah, that’s me.”
Watts collaborated on a song with Lamar awhile back, called “Watts Riot,” but he made the savvy decision not to release it until after Lamar’s star rose. Watts says they’ve stayed in touch since then; they texted recently.
We’re driving to Kansas City, Kansas, to meet up with Kendall Blakeney, the photographer and illustrator behind the media company HiiFreq. He’s a close friend of Watts’, and he’s been shooting Watts’ music videos and designing his merch and album artwork for years. (Blakeney also counts area artists Dom Chronicles, Aaron Alexander and AyEl among his collaborators.) On the way, we talk about Caviart and his other upcoming project, You Don’t Deserve This. The latter, he says, will act as a primer for new Watts fans: He’s loading it with bangers and tracks that are lighthearted and easy to digest. Caviart, though, is something else.
“If I was to die, I would want nobody to tell my daughter who her daddy was, what my ideology was, what my philosophy was,” Watts says. “I want her to be able to listen to this CD and gain those answers on her own, from my mouth.”
Part of what drove Watts to work hard on Caviart was a brush with the law he had in 2012, which put him on probation (it’s supposed to end in September) but could have sent him to prison, he says, for a decade. Incarceration like that would have kept him from seeing his daughter grow up. So Watts holds Caviart dear — he has scrapped multiple versions of the album already and doesn’t want to put out the final product until it can ride strong momentum (thus the creation of You Don’t Deserve This).
There’s reason to believe that the motion he seeks has started. Despite what Watts calls a local habit of people believing themselves too cool to support local artists (yes, it makes him mad), the all-local show he co-headlined last month — called You Don’t Deserve This — drew around 500 people.
A cigarette and a QuikTrip stop later, we pull up at Blakeney’s. Watts wants to review some designs for an upcoming merchandise line to coincide with the release of You Don’t Deserve This. The men reminisce about their partnership, which they agree will continue to grow as the new music emerges. They shake hands and we move on.
Back on the highway, I ask Watts about his parole. One condition of it is drug and alcohol screening. Earlier this year, when he played me some of his new music at his apartment, he poured himself a wineglass full of Dr Pepper before annotating for me his latest beats and lyrics. It’s gotten easier for him, avoiding what the law now forbids him, but he admits he misses being able to hang out where drugs and alcohol available. An invitation to a recent Royals game had to be turned down. For now, it’s cigarettes and soda — substitutes he resents and looks forward to setting aside.
Our next stop is at A’Sean’s house, across the street from Troost Elementary School. Watts calls him a “rapper’s rapper,” and he has bounced ideas and new songs off him over the past year. On this day, as on most, A’Sean is joined by producer and fellow rapper J-Tone, with whom he released a collaborative EP at the end of 2016. Their friend Justin Shoniber — another producer — is also at the house. J-Tone sifts through old soul songs, looking for sampling candidates for future tracks. Watts, A’Sean and Shoniber swap Xbox turns and talk about new music. There are arguments, but they stay friendly, and there is at least one telling consensus: All agree that Atlanta rapper SahBabii, with his unique approach to melody and his absurd imagery, deserves to rise.
Watts listens to some of J-Tone’s new beats, doing a bit of freestyling and playing back rough versions of previously recorded material. One song they go over is “Did It Again,” a recent live favorite that combines a sampled church choir, booming drums and an all-out brag-fest from Watts. An hour or so goes by, and Watts decides that the time isn’t right to do any recording. He and A’Sean slip outside to shoot hoops in the driveway. Watts once dreamed of playing basketball professionally but decided to focus on rapping when he realized that playing ball would result in significantly more time away from his daughter.
Watts and I get back in his car for the last time that afternoon, and we start talking about his legacy. He’s been in the game more than five years now, and regional blogs have steadily posted his music, but he hasn’t tested his fanbase out of state. Still, he’s satisfied that he has achieved something here in Kansas City.
“I made it possible for a lot of people to just be theyself,” he says. “Back in the day, you could not be yourself out here. You’d get looked at crazy if you dressed a certain way. Now you can just be you.”
He’s not wrong. Area rappers several years ago who weren’t deemed tough or street enough stuck to performing in Westport — where rappers from the hood didn’t get booked. Now, thanks to Watts and some friends — and the internet’s way of advancing the genre’s ongoing evolution — certain coded taboos aren’t quite as restrictive.
The release schedule for Watts’ new projects is still up in the air, but more and more, he’s a visible — and, yes, authentic — part of KC hip-hop’s push toward national recognition. When the time is right, we’ll get what he thinks we deserve.
