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Music has long been an escape route for self-taught aboriginal Australian rapper BOY $COUT GATSBY. Moving from Sydney to Wollongong as a kid, BOY $COUT GATSBY was the middle child of a dad who worked long hours and a mum who openly struggled with raising three boys. Gatsby left high school just a few weeks into year 11, after a career advisor scoffed at his plan to be a musician off. Incredibly hurt and annoyed, Gatsby scrawled his autograph on a roll-sheet on his way out. “I handed it to her and said, ‘keep this for later, you can sell it, then maybe you’ll be able to quit this job’.” Gatsby’s mum received a phone call from his headteacher who, despite finding the incident funny, asked him not to come back. Perhaps because he was left alone a lot of the time, Gatsby connected with the honest storytelling of country musicians like Johnny Cash and Kenny Rogers, and later discovered rap artists like Lil Wayne and Tyler, the Creator. Seeing music as “cheaper than therapy”, Gatsby “started writing some stuff one day” and wanted to “try some different shit” more like what he was listening to. “My lyrics have always been the stuff that I couldn't exactly say, or that I thought didn’t deserve to be listened to. But if I put it in a song then I feel like it's a fairer exchange. If people get something that they can listen to, and then in response, I feel listened to, then I don't feel like as much of a piece of shit doing it.” With immense self-sufficiency and something to prove, GATSBY poured all of his energy into music and breaking into the industry – a tough feat with zero connections. While he was trying to make a go of music, his family life was having a profound impact. Hearing his parents stressing about bills and where they were going to get money from meant he placed his ability to earn money as his own value. For a long time, he believed cash would fix everything, and went down a dangerous path: from selling cigarettes aged 12, to getting in with the wrong, older crowd in his mid-teens. A YouTuber friend’s belief and financial incentive pulled him out, giving GATSBY the opportunity to focus solely on music without a constantly looming lack of cash. Today, the YouTuber world remains one he is firmly a part of. Since then, Gatsby has done everything possible to turn his life around. While getting his first radio play and later clocking 100,000 streams were pivotal achievements, releasing his single ‘Let Me In’ was an epiphany-like moment: “that was when I realised that I had levelled-up, and then started to think that I could really do music full-time.” Having since played support shows for the likes of bbno$ and been brought out at friends’ gigs “as a way to cut my teeth”, his love for performing live has been solidified. “There are a few moments in this industry where you really know that this is what you want to do,” he says. “The first time stepping out on the stage I was like ‘no doubt. I’ve got to do this’. It’s a crazy feeling.”