“I will get back to you as soon as I can, Scooby-Doo. I’ve got a plan just for us. Don’t worry, baby, we’re not in a rush.”
This is the outgoing salutation on Reggie Watts’s voicemail. True to his word, the anomalous quipster called back immediately after I left him an admittedly less compelling message. During our 40-minute conversation, Watts and I discussed his improv origins, his philosophy about religion and, of course, Beyoncé.
With your extensive music education and penchant for comedy performed ‘on the fly,’ have you ever gone scripted?
Watts: I was involved in music as a kid, and I was always just interested in any performance-based stuff. I would get involved with doing sketches for student government – we had a competitive dramatics program that allowed us to travel all over the States in various acting categories, and I always chose to improvise. Everything I was doing was improvisational and revolved around comedy and music. So, as far back as I can remember, I’ve just been doing what I do.
Often I’ll hear a rapper get into that flow state, stringing a series of profound verses together, and marvel at what the brain is doing to achieve it. But if you’re constantly thinking a certain way, does it just build off of itself and it becomes momentum?
That’s exactly it. You start thinking and speaking that way, and that becomes your secondary language. It’s not as mysterious to a person that does that all the time, but it’s a little more magical when it comes from the creativity and spontaneity of one’s imagination. You don’t know what’s going to happen, but with experience and the passion for wanting to, it just evolves naturally.
Do audiences generally accept a certain amount of fallibility?
Yeah, they know that it’s not a perfect science. They know you will not always be perfect. That’s part of the journey; they understand that. If [performers] were perfect all the time, it would totally suck.
If it’s our flaws that make us who we are, then obviously some of those fallibilities are almost more important than the punched-in-perfection that this pristine digital era we live in now offers. It almost makes the ‘skips in the record’ more valuable, in a way.
Absolutely. It’s relatable. It’s something that you can put your head around, which is something that people value. It’s not necessarily something that a lot of stars may be into. A Beyoncé type – they want to appear perfect all of the time. And that’s one way of doing it.
Does anybody really buy that, at the end of the day?
I think they want to believe in someone that has no mistakes or is perfect to a degree, that would help them in their process. It’s a young person’s thing. To find an idol, you dig and imagine that they’re perfect. It’s cool, but limited.
Ultimately, it’s an act of humanity showing its youth. We build our idols up with religion, which, as society ages, we see a decline of.
I think that there’s an intelligent, consciousness-enriching ability about what religion is. Religion is a social, spiritual operating system. And some people realize that it can be crafted and it’s not just one rigid way. That’s really the important aspect. That’s the evolution of [religion]. All of the major religions still have a mild version of the [original] religion, which becomes the glue rather than rigidity.
Somewhere along the line, religion became about money and power, which is ultimately about establishing control over people.
It relates to art as well, in that religion, art, or anything that has a resonating message, people will have a tendency to want to follow the leader. There’s a little bit of sheepishness programed in all of us. We are all leaders, and we are all followers. People just really lean on the follower part and forget that they can be their own director. It’s trouble when any religion seeks to prey on the weakness of [the urge to follow] and doesn’t support to the reminder that they have their own power as well. In a way, when I’m doing my improvisations, that’s what that’s about. Nothing is what it seems; nothing is rigid. You realize that you can contextualize and you can see different angles constantly. You create your own meaning in the world, and that’s really important for me to bring across.
If Anton Lavey hadn’t called it Satanism and went instead with “Humanism,” he would have a better rap? Because what you just described is basically [Laveyan] Satanism.
(Laughter) Well, a lot of the tenants are [good], but when people hear ‘Satanism,’ they’re like, ‘Ah, fuck. We’e fucked.’ It was Herbert Hoover who used the term “rugged individualism,” and that idea about rugged individuals meaning Learn as much as you can about the world and yourself. Learn as many things as you can so that you can do a lot of things for yourself and then share that knowledge with other people. If everybody is doing that, then we’re all becoming the best versions of ourselves. The most important aspect is empathy.
Gratitude?
Yeah. Gratitude, passion – all of those things. You can definitely be very self-contained. You can share your knowledge with other people, but it’s not that fun if you know a lot of stuff but you’re unable to find joy in relating to other people. Whatever anyone calls it – Sufism, Buddhism, Christianity, Islam – it’s all just an operating system in its various groupings. They’re all just planning systems for people: training wheels. The religions should be looked at as a starter to get the human acclimated with culture and think about things in different ways. But, hopefully, they take that and evolve it on their own. One might even include elements from other religions and other thoughts systems. That’s the hope, anyway. So many people just stop at the template and are content – which is not necessarily bad, but if they’re aware that they could think of things in other ways and not take advantage of that [knowledge], then that’s a little bit of a loss.
Any artists you would like to work with?
I met [electronica music artist] John Tajada the other day. He’s a huge hero to me. I love his music and I would love to make something with him. But producers can be strange people, especially if they have their ways of doing things. [Also] Michael Mayer, the head of Kompakt Records. I just think that electronic music is ultimately the best form of music – it’s totally open and there are no limits. Its ability to be very anonymous appeals [to me]. It doesn’t have to be personality-driven. Sometimes I just want to dance. I don’t care that it’s Gwen Stafani or Beyoncé hitting the lead – that’s not interesting to me. The music is.
Reggie Watts performs Sunday, Apr. 9, at Vogue Theatre. Tickets from ticketfly.com.
