walking upstream…
G-Eazy
Gerald Earl Gillum grew up moving between two households of taste in Berkeley and Oakland. His parents, both visual artists — a photographer-printmaker mother who taught at the San Francisco Art Institute, a sculptor father at Fresno State — played the Beatles, the Kinks and Bob Dylan at home, while the Berkeley public schools around him ran on Tupac and Bay Area rap. By 13 he was riding the bus with A Tribe Called Quest in his headphones and making beats after school. He built his early name on a trick he worked out alone: half-timing 1950s doo-wop drums under booming 808s. That fusion, paired with a slicked-back greaser look, carried him from free mixtapes to a 2014 major-label debut and pop-rap hits — two record collections, never really separated, running through one artist.
the sound in question
2017
No LimitG-Eazy
walk the tributaries ↓
Dion1960s · Doo-wop / Rock and roll / Pop
His mother and grandparents supplied the soundtrack, not him. 'My mom and grandparents would play that stuff around the house... when I was growing up,' G-Eazy told the Broward Palm Beach New Times in 2013 — and by his early twenties he'd worked out how to flip it: 'You just half time the drums, throw 808s under them, and it's a match made in heaven.' In 2011 he did exactly that to Dion's 1961 hit 'Runaround Sue,' turning the doo-wop original into what the hip-hop site DJBooth called 'an insanely catchy backdrop' for his own version, same title, same hook, new drums.
listen: upstream & heresource: Broward Palm Beach New Times — Rapper G-Eazy on Sampling Doo-Wop Music (Dion, doo-wop production method) ↗
1961
Runaround SueDion
2011
Runaround SueG-Eazy
listen forDion's 1961 original rides a bright, bouncing vocal-group shuffle behind his lead. Slow the drums to half speed, drop 808s underneath, and it becomes G-Eazy's 2011 remake — the same doo-wop hook still audible under his verses, the bounce now a head-nodding hip-hop swing. Of the three pairings, this is the most literal handoff: one title, one melody, carried whole from 1961 into 2011.
Nas1990s · East Coast hip hop / Hardcore hip hop / Jazz rap
Asked to choose, on a rapid-fire interview game, between Jay-Z's '99 Problems' and Nas's 'N.Y. State of Mind,' G-Eazy didn't hesitate either. 'I gotta go with that one, honestly,' he said on UPROXX's interview series Sound Check. 'The impact of Illmatic and now I'm living in New York, that song just paints such a vivid picture of the city — the dark undertones of the music, those boom bap drums and just his vivid imagery in his lyrics.' He'd named Nas among his own four biggest early influences a decade before, back when he was 13 and just starting to make beats.
listen: upstream & here
1994
N.Y. State of MindNas
2014
Opportunity CostG-Eazy
listen forNas's original hangs a grim, scene-setting verse over producer DJ Premier's stark, minor-key piano loop — atmosphere before argument. G-Eazy's 'Opportunity Cost,' from the same 2014 album that made his name, works the same way: a hushed, confessional verse about the price of chasing a record deal, over production the music site Pitchfork called 'moody and atmospheric.' It closes on an unscripted touch — a real voicemail from his mother, left the day he signed with the label RCA — the vivid, personal image standing in for Nas's city.
Mac Dre1990s–2000s · West Coast hip-hop / Gangsta rap / Hyphy
At 13, sorting through the rappers who mattered most to him, G-Eazy didn't hesitate on the hometown pick. 'Growing up in the bay, Mac Dre was a massive influence,' he told the magazine Vibe in 2013. 'He was everybody's favorite rapper. [He had] the whole scene going on in The Bay.' Mac Dre — born in Oakland, raised in nearby Vallejo, shot dead on tour in 2004 — was a founding figure of hyphy, the loose, ad-libbed, party-first strain of Bay Area rap that treated a rap song like a block party. He gave G-Eazy a hometown blueprint before G-Eazy ever left the Bay behind.
listen: upstream & heresource: VIBE — VIBE Exclusive! Bay Area Rapper G-Eazy Talks Mac Dre Influence (Mac Dre, Nas testimony) ↗
2004
Feelin' MyselfMac Dre
2014
Far AloneG-Eazy
listen forMac Dre's 'Feelin' Myself' runs on rubbery bass, shouted ad-libs and a beat built to move a room, not impress a critic. G-Eazy's 'Far Alone' chases that same loose-limbed, up-tempo bounce, and pulls E-40 — Mac Dre's own hyphy-era running partner — onto the hook, a direct hand from one generation of the Bay's party rap to the next. No sample links the two records; the debt here is in attitude and collaborator, not a lifted bar.