About Watsky
Artist Biography
With whimsical imagery and a syncopated, turbocharged flow, Watsky is a multi-talented DIY success story who blends spoken word and rap.
• Watsky’s father is a former English professor, while his mother worked as an elementary school librarian. He credits his parents with fostering his passion for wordplay.
• A high school teacher referred the once-disruptive Watsky to Youth Speaks, a poetry workshop in San Francisco. In 2006, he was crowned the Youth Speaks Grand Slam Poetry Champion.
• He appeared on Season 6 of HBO’s Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry Jam.
• Watsky’s jazz/hip-hop band Invisible Inc. released a self-titled album in 2007. The ensemble returned for a second LP in 2018.
• In the 2010s, Watsky earned hundreds of millions of streams portraying William Shakespeare and Edgar Allen Poe in the web series Epic Rap Battles of History.
• His 2014 album All You Can Do cracked the Top 40 on the Billboard 200 album chart. It includes “Whoa Whoa Whoa,” an Anderson .Paak–produced song with a video starring Jim Belushi and Bo Burnham.
• His Shockwave-assisted song “An Open Letter” appears on the 2016 gold-certified Hamilton Mixtape compilation.
• Penguin Books’ Plume division compiled 13 of Watksy’s essays for the 2016 book How To Ruin Everything.
Hometown
San Francisco, CA, United States
Genre
Hip-Hop/Rap
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