Soon, his beats began to pick up traction in the Southern and Midwestern rap circuits. Through it all, EST Gee continued making music. While recovering from his injuries, he began writing his next album Ion Feel Nun. In September 2019, after filming a video with rapper Sada Baby, EST Gee was shot five times (four in the stomach and once in his eye). In 2019, EST Gee began to gain a local following in Louisville, self-releasing two albums, El Toro and Die Bloody, before being struck by multiple personal tragedies. He decided to pursue music professionally and created the acronym EST – Everybody Shine Together – with his nickname Gee (for George) to become EST Gee. After being cut during the preseason, Stone had a decision to make: football or rap. In 2017, he released his first single, “Stains,” while trying to make the roster for the CFL’s Winnipeg Blue Bombers.
WHERE EST GEE FROM PROFESSIONAL
Austin State University for his final two collegiate seasons.Įven as a professional football career appeared to be on the horizon, Stone was also writing music.
As a senior in 2012, he received a football scholarship to play for Indiana State University, where he spent two years before transferring to Sacramento City College for one season, and transferred to Stephen F. In his four seasons at Saint Xavier, Stone lettered in basketball, football and track, and was ranked as the top linebacker in the state of Kentucky. Before making a name for himself in the music industry and collaborating with chart-topping rappers such as Lil Baby and Yo Gotti, George Stone III was a first-team all-state athlete at Saint Xavier High School, a private all-boys Catholic school. EST Gee’s lyricism doesn’t bring the catharsis of a therapy session or the removed vantage point of hindsight I Never Felt Nun comes straight from the heart, hardened like armor.With the release of rapper EST Gee’s latest mixtape, Bigger Than Life or Death, making the rounds this week, fans of the Louisville, Kentucky, native may be surprised to learn about his sports background. Though rap has reached vast new emotional depths in the last decade, Gee’s confessionals are still startling in how bluntly they address the demons head-on.
There’s a loose religiosity to the album’s themes, evident in titles like “Is Heaven for a Gangsta,” “Hell,” and “Bow and Say Grace.” But just like romance, faith can offer more fear and uncertainty than comfort: “Is there heaven for a shooter/Is there heaven for a mover?/Or was I born in hell and all this shit an illusion?” In his most vulnerable moment, on “Voices In My Head,” EST Gee sings to a friend who took his own life, and as he lies awake in bed praying for release, Gee admits to admiring the “bravery” of the act. The pain is obvious and the sentiments impassioned, but the central refrain-“When you come home/Just know I miss you/Like you missing me”-is Gee at his most melodic, suggesting a capacity for emotionally driven anthems beyond raw bars. The guitar riff on “Come Home” is emo-tinged, but Gee’s full-throated chorus sounds more like it was ghostwritten by bro-country troubadour Sam Hunt. While others might numb the trauma with substances, Gee more often speaks of death and violence themselves as addictions, unable to imagine life without the bloodlust itself.Īt times, bars alone can’t encapsulate the hurt, and Gee’s singing reveals a voice desperate to exorcize and express his emotions. The ad-libs underneath EST Gee’s bars are a non-stop current of mumbles and half-formed syllables, an uncanny counterpoint to his most precise raps that mimic a paranoid stream of thoughts. On the opening of “Both Arms,” his gravelly flow is drier than jerky, and he frequently trails off and cracks like his voice is on the verge of giving out. Gee’s delivery carries a sense of purposeful desperation, like he’s rapping not to tell a story or offer wisdom, but to keep breathing. It’s when he gets back to his roots that Kelly is at his most tolerable, with a more genuine energy than his alt-rock cosplay. The most surprising regional touch is the appearance from Machine Gun Kelly on “Death Around the Corner,” an unexpected reminder that, long before he was a pop star chasing the clout dragon, MGK was a rageful Ohio-bred Yelawolf knockoff who feuded with Eminem. There’s a slight Southern twang to the production, with Zaytoven-esque organ trills on “Voices in My Head” and triumphant horns on album closer “The Realest,” a throwback to classic mixtape era trap that caps off with a Jeezy feature. He equally channels the ferocious speed of current Michigan rap, the aching lyricism of Chicago drill, and the bluesy refrains of Southern crooners like Kevin Gates and Rod Wave. Like his home state, Gee’s music sits at a stylistic Mason-Dixon Line, situated between the Bible and Rust Belts, deep fried and industrialized in equal measure.
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