Bay Area emcee G-Eazy, in a recent interview with SiriusXM, spoke about how he was starstruck when he first met his favourite rapper of all time and admitted that the encounter became uncomfortable; he even went as far as to say he was left feeling “embarrassed.”
G-Eazy (real name Gerald Gillum) first arrived in the mainstream around 2012. Initially emerging as a record producer, Eazy worked locally with acts such as The Cataracs and Lil B. Still, with musical connections across the Bay Area, the rapper slowly cultivated a fan base with his projects and, by the mid-2010s, was a star.
However, prior to fame, the lyricist was a fan and huge supporter of Kanye West. In a 2021 conversation with SiriusXM, the ‘These Things Happen’ rapper was asked which artists influenced his music, and Gillium was quick to name the Graduation icon.
Speaking about his love for West as an adolescent, Gillium explained, “My first concert was Kanye West! I was, I think, 13 or 14, and it was College Dropout. And I remember at that time, Kanye, the barriers he broke coming out the gate with his first album, and just being so bold and being so unique and being so himself, and confident in who he was.”
G-Eazy continued, “And somebody else who, his genius was digging back and taking old soul samples and flipping those and reinterpreting them in a different way. And for that reason, he just always inspired me the most. That’s probably one of my biggest heroes.”
Speaking about the first time he met West, in a 2018 interview with Live Nation, G-Eazy disclosed, “Let me tell you about this one time I fan’d out. I met my favourite artist of all time, Kanye, and I did not know what to say. I was hella nervous. And I just started babbling.”
He continued, “Just, I don’t even know what I was saying, I watched his eyes go like… okay, anyway, and resumed a conversation over here. I was so defeated, I was so embarrassed. I just couldn’t help it, Kanye’s like, the greatest of all time.”
You can listen to G-Eazy’s SiriusXM interview below.
