Chester Watson
ex-Atlanta Rapper Denies that Fish Climb Trees
Struggles to Remember Dreams
He Finds Peace in the Countryside
Hip-hop was born in urban parks and apartment projects, but there’s also a pastoral tradition in rap that long predates Kanye West’s flight to Wyoming. Earl Sweatshirt’s mother shipped him off to reform school on a remote Pacific island at a pivotal early point in the Odd Future boy genius’s career. Upon his return, Earl became one of the most influential lyricists in rap history. One of his young fans was a teenage skater and ballet dancer named Chester Watson, who’s now a lanky 26-year-old responsible for a decade’s-worth of his own brain-shifting hip-hop. The title of Watson’s latest album, Fish Don’t Climb Trees, combines two images from the rural town an hour and half outside of Atlanta where the underground rap star spends much of his time these days. The record’s name refers to “being underestimated or counted out,” he told me, with tantalizingly little elaboration. Maybe fish can climb trees in some other dream-universe that we can theoretically access, or maybe the limits …
