Image via Chester Watson/Instagram
Kevin Crandall still misses Rudy Gobert in a Utah Jazz jersey.
Zooming in from his room in Georgia, Chester Watson lays out his theory of connection between dreaming and astral projection: “Anytime I’m dreaming, I know I’m doing it, and I can lucid dream,” he explains. “That type of mental power is a step towards astral projection…[it] starts with lucid dreaming and you progressively have more control over what happens.”
Astral projection has long been a constant in Watson’s life and career. The St. Louis-born rapper actively pursued the spiritual practice as a teenager and “still [feels] the residue” of those experiences as he’s gotten older. That residue grounds his music, where Watson regularly evokes the spiritual realm to “bridge the gap between this world” and the astral plane, often supplementing with a heavy dose of weed.
During his COLORS X STUDIOS performance this past September, Watson put those astral residuals on full display, conversing with an enchantress about dark magic while lighting up a gushers strain joint on “chasing clouds.” The COLORS show would lay the groundwork for his first release of the year, winter mirage, in February. A static-riddled collage of spliff smoke and meditations over Ill Sugi beats, the record concludes the mirage series Watson began as a teenager, completing the seasonal cycle almost a decade later.
Watson’s latest evocations of astral travel are penned in Montisona, a collaborative EP with Ontario producer and Mello Music Group familiar Elaquent. The project came together over the course of a few days, with a flurry of emails and beat-swapping driving the creation. When it comes to developing EPs, Watson explained that he “wants them to be quickly digestible…there’s a lot packed into them, but the messages are so concise cause they have to be.” Each track is crafted like a quick hitter, rolling up spiritual transmissions and Japanese imagery in the bass-driven boom bap Elaquent lines the paper with to emit a throat-burning high.
The EP opens with a lecture sample on Igbo metaphysics over lush piano refrains before dissolving into a flurry of ruminations by the monotone samurai. Later on, Watson blends the physical world with the spiritual, buoying advice with good-faith skepticism, while meditating for guidance on “odyssey.” The music unearths the subconscious with marijuana and a katana.
As he was prepping for the release of Montisona, I caught up with Watson over Zoom to talk about the latest arc of his career odyssey, the intricacies of astral projection, and his dream of designing a fashion collection.
(This interview has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.)