chester watson

Prodigious talent can be an albatross. The pressure to realize the promise of your youthful work might weigh you down for an album or a career. 23-year-old Chester Watson spent the last three years crafting his debut album, October’s A Japanese Horror Film that is out on POW Recordings. Though Watson released the 10-track Project 0 and an instrumental album (as well as a few singles) between 2017 and 2020, he felt the pressure of every blog post and article that forecasted swift success. Florida-raised and now Georgia-based, Watson is a skateboarding ballet dancer turned lyrical savant. He started rapping at 13 and racked up hundreds of thousands of YouTube views just two years later with “Phantom.” On mixtapes like 2014’s Tin Wookie, Watson synthesized his few influences (e.g., Earl Sweat...