Chester Watson Never Existed

monti, Los Angeles, 2020

Wake up, Monti… The Matrix has yoü… 

The biggest existential question: Does anything ever exist¿ We live in a world of smoke and mirrors reflecting everything but our true selves most times. 

I honestly wrote seven pages on this and it felt so scatterbrained that it seemed it wouldn’t be effective and my points would be missed. The entire point of this piece is to be understood more. So, I’ll start with my childhood, my mother, and how I was raised before Chester Watson was ever an idea.

Know thyself. I used to think that I always had a great sense of self. I think what started this entire awakening was my grandfather passing away. It wasn’t necessarily his death that made me begin to look inward, it was how his death affected my mom. This is her father. Someone who she loved deeply and learned from eternally. I had never really experienced death this closely. I don’t know what I was doing but I didn’t go to the funeral in St. Louis. I haven’t been back to St. Louis in years unfortunately. 

My mother asked me if I wanted to see a picture of how they found my grandfather. I said, “Yes,”. There he was. The image now burnt into my mind, but it was an image I wanted and needed to see and I think my mother knew that. 

I’ve always been my mother’s twin. I’m the only child of hers that carries her last name. I’ve copied my mother’s signature as our names are so close in cursive. I’ve looked to my mom to learn everything: strength, wisdom, courage, love, forgiveness, kindness, hatred, and standing firm in what yoü believe in. She made mëë everything that I was up until 2016. I think she was the strongest guiding force in my life, and rightfully so, she gave mëë life. 

Seeing my mother experience the death of her father and having the conversations and experiences that I had with her in the aftermath of his passing, made mëë realize that I was doing a lot of things very wrong. I had to be honest with myself. What did I prioritize and why? I had to be honest with the people around mëë. Sometimes that honesty includes admitting that yoü’ve outgrown people yoü once held close and that people may feel they have outgrown you. I’ve learned that how a person goes about severing those bonds and relationships says more about them and how they truly see the other person than anything. I think everyone understands that people grow and things change. Nothing is forever. That’s why people cling to the idea and energy of youth so vehemently. It is pure. They long for a time where life seemed like it could never end. Once the idea of mortality begins to build a fortress in the mind, people change. Some people change for the better, and some people change for the worse.

When I first changed my name to ‘Chester Watson’ I got called pretentious by one of my closest friends. He said I was trying to be something that I wasn’t but I was only trying to build a world that only I saw in my head. Yoü are always the only person who can see your vision and so I learned that lesson early on; not everyone understands and not everyone is meant to understand. 

As a black kid growing up interested in Tim Burton, Halloweentown, Samurai, Witches, and Magic, I was always seen as the “white black guy”. I start to think about all of these things in my life that made mëë who I actually am. I start revisiting movies and shows from my childhood. My top 3 being The Wiz, Scooby Doo and the Ghoul School, and The Matrix, if any three movies were to describe my personality. Back then, people equated knowledge of the esoteric and the occult or spiritual to whiteness. Which I never fully understood because my existence was always very African-American. Cookouts, Flea Markets, and Christmas in St. Louis. Staying at the pool all day because that was one of the easiest and cheapest ways for my mom, aunties, & godmothers to get all of us together for family outings. I always connected with and saw black people first. I was naturally drawn to things that were notoriously deemed by most Christian and consequently most black families as taboo or devil work. Even within my own family, I had conversations with my mother about my subject matter and she was always the most understanding of mëë because she was always different herself. I think she tried to be understanding of all of her children and where their heads were, not just mëë honestly. She made tough decisions as a mother, like most good mothers do. Some that I will probably never know anything about and others that I know of but will never write. 

My mother was a scholar who grew up in the hood, so she always had the energy and mindset of a scholar but rarely the resources and opportunities to act on her inherent ability to productively absorb the world around her. She was always a dissector of life from my eyes. She broke things down into components that were able to be digested and solved systematically. I got many traits from my mother and her thirst for knowledge is one that I note often. I was a scholar. She made sure that I had opportunities available to mëë that she didn’t. That often put mëë into spaces where I was one of, if not the only, black people in the room. Yoü learn to see micro-aggressions and try to avoid the people that send them your way but racism is omnipresent. It’s unavoidable and arguably permeates and infects any space that isn’t solely composed of black people. Time has shown us it can even infiltrate the most formidable black spaces and fortresses via Trojan Horse if the price is right and morals are shaky. 

A lot of lessons I learned, I forgot. Yoü simply cannot truly care what other people have to say about your art. Some input is valid but the core of the art is from you and your mind and should never be influenced by what others may think unless you feel the criticism is actually beneficial to the product, which it rarely is in my experience. Especially from people who you don’t necessarily see as being on the same level of creativity or more creative than you. There was rarely anyone more creative than me around me and that is a problematic truth that I had to confront. I had to relearn where my place in the world was for many reasons. My family was always very important to mëë, but we grew up quite scattered geographically and consequently our connections and memories grew fuzzier with time. This is something that I wanted to change and just started asking my people to pay more attention to each other. The charge was led and echoed by my mother of course.

I was faced with duality quite a bit in my life in many different forms. A pisces sun, gemini moon. My mother is a Gemini and my father a Libra and they both had nicknames themselves. Having two names seemed like a normal thing. In the black experience, what we refer to as code-switching is a relatively normal thing. It’s inherent to how a lot black people have learned to survive and thrive in professional settings. This is what the world has taught and shown everyone - proximity to whiteness usually equates with proximity to wealth, and that is simply racist. Foundationally, America is racist. Black people know this. I think depending on where yoü are and what yoü experience yoü learn how to operate around racism in your own way. Some people are ignorant to it and think it won’t happen to them; some people are aware and don’t care about the next person; some people violently reject and hate association with white people; and some people assimilate in a way that is closer to cohabiting and compromise.

This leads me to Nü Age and how it was formed and my early years writing. Nü Age was never meant to be a solely black space. It didn't start like that. It started as a skate group in middle school and was filled with the most characteristic characters in my performing arts middle school. Piano majors, Ballet majors, Drama majors, Art majors all colliding and skating together. All colors and races involved. My nickname was “Ghost”, which would later influence my song and mixtape “Phantom”. Once we all left middle school, that group separated and disbanded naturally. I still clung to the idea of building a community but it shifted from skateboarding to music. 

Music was a much different space than skateboarding at that time. In skating yoü’re respected mainly for your hard work. In music, the metrics for success fluctuate. I came into music with the discipline and work ethic of a trained ballet dancer and a hard core skater; I was relentless. I am still very much this way. I think in music the space is more dominated by popularity than skill. I was always a well known person and attribute that being possible to the fact that I never was afraid to be myself or let others be themselves around mëë. I didn’t judge anyone, that's how I grew up. That was a projection of mine. I didn’t judge anyone in hopes that people would not judge mëë but I ultimately knew that people did and always would, because people are human, and humans are flawed. But that is not how everyone sees the world or sees others in humanity. 

I began to write about my life just as I think any other young observer would, but I was just inherently a good storyteller and I think people noticed quite quickly. I always loved painting pictures with my words. I always loved taking people to somewhere else, because I mentally enjoyed being somewhere else myself. The name Chester Watson came from a lot of influences that happened around the time I was probably 13. The game Fable 2 being the most influential on my psyche and the name and my interest in British Literature followed shortly after.

In this game, yoü’re thrown into a world of magic and sorcery. The theme of choice and duality is very tangible. Nearly every single decision yoü make affects the outcome and how people in the world see yoü and this was my first immersive experience like this. So this influence combined with my understanding that in business, a white name got your further, made that name change seem more like a social experiment and social commentary than a permanent thing. In job applications, a white name statistically gets yoü further into the process. Argue with yoür psychologist.

My original rap name was not Chester Watson, it was actually my real name, funnily enough. This entire transformation feels like I am returning to my roots in such a cathartic way. I was never far from them but I just understand them more deeply now. I understand that as a black man that has been in and seen this life and this industry, it is up to mëë to help light the fire within the next generation of creators and visionaries. I have to pass on my knowledge and my lineage to someone and I think every race except for black people takes pride in keeping things within their community; whether it be money, love, or anything in between. Who, what, and where I want to give my resources, time, energy, and knowledge to, started to become more of a questionable thing. After years of trying to build with my friends in Nü Age, their creative work ethic simply did not match mine. I think many events showed mëë that I should be in a much different space than my friends were, and I usually physically was to keep focus, but I ignored any signs to part ways because they were my friends who once showed mëë nothing but potential. 

They say “if yoü want to go fast, go alone. If yoü want to go far, go together.” I tried to keep this mentality, but I saw my closest friends become people that I didn’t want to go anywhere with. I saw myself becoming a different person. I saw people seeing mëë become a different person and distancing themselves. I saw people not actually stick around to even see what type of person I was becoming for fear they may get caught in the radiation of a nuclear fallout. I saw people become cowards and spineless when they could have been courageous, or at least a comrade. I saw everyone who said they knew Chester, not actually wanting to know Monti, and that deeply hurt mëë. Rarely even a conversation, and that’s okay. That’s when I was shown the two are more separate than I had thought. That they must be. Your heart can not and should not be where your business is if yoür business is not with your actual family, and even then it’s murky waters. I understand that family is complicated and no family is perfect but I was taught by my mother that family looks out for each other; family sacrifices for each other. With Nü Age and with people that I was affiliated with, the dynamic started to feel less like family and more like a business. I had to follow up all of the time or it felt like I was contractually bound to underperformers. This unspoken contract felt like a cosmic 360 deal. So I began to opt out. 

One of the saddest things I’ve ever experienced was seeing creative light in my friends be killed by drugs and the culture around it. I think everyone approaches drugs differently. Their involvement or non-involvement with them and to what extent they tango in the underworld. For mëë, drugs always came back to experimentation. I’m testing these substances like I may test food. I do research and if the side effects don’t seem like some shit I actually want to deal with for the rest of my life, I close the search bar tab and probably scratch my head wondering why people would subject themselves to a world that should be considered one of the 9 circles of hell explored by Dante. Drugs literally zapped my friends’ creativity,  or time to be creative, and like any muscle, if yoü don’t exercise it, the muscle weakens. Yoü try to be understanding of life and of priorities but when people have more resources and stability than yoü, and are older than yoü, it becomes harder and harder to be understanding with every new thing they do that shows yoü they are changing. This change is not a change that I want to be a part of. I don’t like pills. I tried them and I barely remember 6 months of 2016. An experiment that I saw quite early on was not sustainable. From a ballet perspective, how can I perform at my best if I can't remember anything? So for mëë the choice became simple and cold turkey. An unnecessary expense that I was happy to not have anymore. 

I realized Nü Age wasn't what I set it out to represent. I honestly didn't know what it represented anymore. I started Nü Age in hopes that we’d approach unity, creativity, and music like Wu-Tang Clan, the Soulquarians, Odd Future, Awful Records, the Dungeon Family, or A$AP Mob; like all of these great rap and creative collectives before us. One key aspect of these groups that I did not fully understand and digest at age 13 was that all of these groups that I looked up to were foundationally black communities and primarily black creative spaces. Nü Age was not this. Nü Age was for all and that is one thing that I have to shed light on positively. Nü Age united a lot of sub-groups in the city where I grew up, St. Petersburg, FL. Our network hit basically every archetype of teenager and adult: grungy skaters, fly hypebeasts, and  scholars respected the movement, there was simply a lot there. My friends whether black, slavic, spanish, or white, all brought different networks to the table. With so many energies at play there was never really a “leader”. I genuinely didn't want to be in charge of anyone else. That's not why I started making music. So when I was unspokenly put into the position of notoriety and power it felt a bit confusing for mëë. All of these people who could care less about my existence before, started to notice Chester. This is not to discredit anyone that loved or supported mëë when I primarily went by Montrell or even Monty, because like I mentioned earlier, their support was foundational for everything Chester Watson. The people that knew and loved Montrell became the people that got spam promo messages from Chester haha it was the birth of a giant. Even that change confused people though. They did not understand where I was going with any of this but they believed in mëë. Chester Watson was a protection charm. I knew in my bones that I would be “famous” before I graduated high school. I said it out loud literally every single day of my freshman year but I also worked towards that reality every second that I could. I was aware of magic, and the evil eye, and that the evil eye even worked through TV and that’s why some artists like Michael Jackson always wore sunglasses. So I was never confused internally because I always knew that Chester was a figment of the imagination and a polished vessel for my creativity. 

Sometimes the proverbial “lesser of two evils” is nonexistent. I’ve also always known that as a black man, people will ultimately have whatever idea of mëë in their minds that they want to. My mother always made mëë aware of my position in life being black. “Yoü can’t do what your white friends do. Yoü can’t do what these white-skinned Spanish can do. Yoü are different.”. With this warning in the back of my mind before I made music, I only ever gravitated to white people and Spanish people that respected not just me, but black people and black culture as a whole. That’s really all I was ever exposed to. Racism was around me but I had a multi-cultural neighborhood and group of friends that never really got into that territory. We kept things skate and fun. My best friend was Costa Rican and I have never heard him utter the word “nigga”. 

Rap & Hip-Hop is often a much different space. Black people are the blueprint. Yoü have people outside of the race who feel entitled to be able to participate in what is truly a cultural movement because they simply have knowledge of it. Rarely is that ever the case or synopsis when it comes to black people looking out into the world and participating in other cultures. We don’t have a feeling that we deserve to be a part of something cultural if it has nothing to do with us. For example, even though physically we could do many traditional dances and probably better than the people of the culture they come from, why would we¿ There is no reason for us to adopt those things, but every other culture feels the need to adopt lingo, style, or taste from African-Americans; a people that they all seem to turn their nose up at. That is something that always bothered mëë. There were multiple times I had to address the use of the N-word around mëë. For a time, the respect was there but I am never in Florida or consistently with the rest of Nü and hadn’t been for years, so people change. This became a point of tension for mëë and the start of the end in my eyes. I come back to someone I called my brother linking with people who we would never associate with. Why? I don’t know and it confused mëë to the point I felt I had to distance myself. 

I’ve learned that people gravitate to who and what they see themselves in and the easiest way to see yourself in something is by being represented by someone that looks like you. That might be for a reason. I recently watched an interview with Vic Mensa and Chance the Rapper, and they had a conversation with depth that I don’t think I could have had with anyone remaining in Nü Age, and I had known that for a while. I had always had the more existential conversations with my black friends, with Vash, with Dev, with Uptown, with the guys who I’d known for much less time I was just able to get a much clearer picture of my reality without all of the smoke and mirrors, because ultimately the guys in Nü could never understand the racism that I just naturally face. There were racist moments we all experienced together in Nü Age and most of, if not all of the times cops felt the need to be involved, it had something to do with me being black and being around.

“The final straw is usually the smallest”. In all honesty, the straw that broke the camel’s back for Nü Age was me asking for $500 and consequently me seeing I'm wasting time. I was told “my conscience is clear bro”. This sentence left a crater in my spirit and an album that I fought and sacrificed my time and energy to help make, on a shelf that will ultimately never see the light of day. I feel it shouldn’t anymore. Everything that I thought was there, simply wasn’t. I was constantly shown that the personal investment, the work ethic, and just the overall life path were not in line with mine. Why would I further that tether¿ Long before that, I was confused by what Kent would prioritize. I never watched what any of my friends did with their money, but when that's all someone talks about it's hard not to question the use of resources. I learned those friends really rarely cared about investing in structuring their art to be self-sustaining. I don’t know how far or how deeply they thought into things, if they did at all, it always confused mëë and when things get confusing, I’ve learned that my form of self-preservation involves distance. 

Why am I saying all of this¿ I've always been vocal about how I feel, and it turned out that’s what I would get paid to do in this life. I think that's because I represent a sector of people that are often misjudged in one way or another; I call us the One-Winged Angels. These are people who have always seen the duality in reality and chosen their own paths. Whether right or wrong, it was for them and their journey. Some chose violence & chaos, some chose enlightenment & peace, but we all share a commonality in a creative vision for the future, no matter what the past or present may try to show us is possible. 

This leads mëë to where I am today and my final points. Monti and the Daydream Vanguard. I don’t plan to delete or erase Chester or the lineage and history that I have built there. It was always mëë. From the beginning, it was always the world in my head. I contemplated that possibility and in my eyes it would make everything a waste. I just see this state of mental liberation as a part of my journey. Where I see my resources being used when I die and even while I’m still here is just too important to mëë. I want to build in all communities, but I know and understand that the African-American community, and the black community around the world, needs minds like mine working harder for it. We are only 13% of the population here in the U.S. but we somehow get blamed for everything wrong.

I want to emphasize that I do not hate white people at all. I have my views on how many people I have encountered and observed, a number of them non-black but not all, eventually begin to move throughout the world. Whites are somehow always the gatekeepers of cultures they didn’t create and that is something that we all, as humans, have to work to change. I feel white people have a unique responsibility in bringing balance back to the world because they have inherent power built into the fabrics of society, a power mainly built through historical conquest and colonialism. That will require selflessness, courage, and sacrifice that can really only come from them, honestly. There are a lot of white people in my life who I have a lot of love for and who I feel do genuinely care about me and who respect black culture as a whole as well. Those are the people, red, yellow, black, white, or brown, that I want to have around me. 

As of writing this, there are currently three worlds that I see; three albums building the universe for Monti to take flight. Explaining where I have been in music; my journey in life; mëë finding my space in time; it’s all there. 

As an idea, maybe Chester existed, but as a person I can’t say he ever really did. Ideas usually last longer than humans do if you make them with the right recipe of humanity and fantasy. Reality is surreal.

I don’t know how to put the idea of Chester into a box because it was the idea that broke the fourth wall. I wouldn’t call Chester a doppelgänger or an alter ego. Chester never existed physically, it was always Monti pulling the strings.