On the latest Kyle Meredith With… podcast episode, rapper G-Eazy discusses his break from music as he now returns refreshed, and with an upcoming album.
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Despite his massive hits like “Me, Myself & I” and “I Mean It,” G-Eazy has been taking on-and-off breaks from music in the past two years. “I needed to step away, and especially after losing my mom, to just take time to live a bit, to travel, and to just really be,” he told podcaster Kyle Meredith. The rapper was extremely close with his mom, who passed away in November 2021. Taking to Instagram this past Mother’s Day, he wrote, “I know you’re still here with us in spirit, in my dreams, on stage with me, and in my energy. I love you so much forever.”
As part of his break from music, he decided to move to Paris where he and his mom would visit. G-Eazy described the romanticism he felt there, with the first song he wrote becoming his return single, “Tulips & Roses”. Ultimately, he said things were “clicking again” as he recovered from what he called, “the factory of LA.”
Describing the constant change of producers, collaborators, and coworkers, G-Eazy compared the industry in LA as, “like speed dating.” “I work in the music business, but I always fight for the fact that the word music comes first,” he explained. “We don’t call it the business of music, we call it the music business more often than not. But nonetheless, we live at the intersection of art and commerce. And it’s tough sometimes, because as many of us would love to just make art… that is a luxury.” He described the intense pressure that the industry can put on an artist to be successful, and how that often leads musicians astray from their own goals.“What matters the most, at the end of the day, to me is leading with honesty and leading with your heart when you go to create.”
And since his time away, G-Eazy is making a comeback doing just that. In fact, he expressed that “Tulips & Roses” was an integral part of his resurgence, and will be a part of an upcoming album. The 33-year-old rapper described the album as a return to himself, saying, “It was me, having fun again, being myself again, being honest again and just getting back to basics, making music because I love making music. And that’s really it.”
Ultimately, G-Eazy alluded that he would always come back to music, no matter how many breaks may be necessary. “Life is ongoing, creativity is ongoing,” he said, “and it’s kind of like these are journal entries, different chapters of the biography of my life.”
Listen to the full chat with G-Eazy on Kyle Meredith With... -- now streaming on Audacy -- an interview series in which WFPK's Kyle Meredith speaks to a wide breadth of musicians, digging deep into the artist's work to find out how the music is made and where their journey is going.
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