Just minutes before starting my interview with Will Hatcher on Google Meet I scour through virtual backgrounds in search of a backdrop that resembles the Vettriano-esque painting, Fruity Pebbles-colored Medusa floor lamp and childhood family portrait that decorates the room in Delicious Bath Water’s oldest available video “iRant: They Stole My Palm Trees!!”. “The only person strong enough to steal a tree right now is Superman, and he’s too busy dancing to [Crank Dat]”, Willie Dynomite claims as he closes his rant about the tree stealing thieves with a curt, “I blame hip-hop”. Two ditches sat in his front yard, and two palm trees hid within the canvas behind him.
Hatcher’s brand of comedy made a mark on me from the days of searching YouTube for parodies in middle school. I believe I first stumbled upon his trove of skits after unearthing the highly viral “Crank Dat Homeless Man”, a Soulja Boy parody which received a co-sign from Big Draco himself. He recently became more widely known for “BBL Drizzy” is AI produced track that Metro Boomin flipped into a Drake diss of his own, but he has been catching the attention of the rappers he parodies for years.
Striking out on finding the perfect background, I settle for a “professional” liminal doctor’s office scene—just as Hatcher joins donning his staple ‘Zaddy’ cap. I’ve watched Hatcher through my computer screen for almost twenty years, but today he’s looking back. With the passing years Hatcher favors his younger self, so much so that as our conversation begins I half expect him to open saying, “So my neighborhood is getting kind of dangerous…”
Born in Georgia and raised in Delray Beach, Florida, Hatcher created his Delicious Bath Water YouTube channel in July 2007 while attending film school where he was learning to write, produce, and direct short films. The channel’s first upload, a short comedy film titled ‘The Convicted Counselor’, about a convict helping a cast of characters while completing a work release program—has since become lost media. As Hatcher began working on a second short film, the school started losing staff until just one instructor was left teaching the entire course. The film schools’ promise of lifetime access to recording equipment for students faltered as it struggled to operate. Blocked from recording and eager to continue building his production skill set, Hatcher turned to the emerging video sharing site YouTube as an outlet. “A lot of my stuff starts from hitting a barrier that makes me pivot”, he says about the channel’s origins. That pivot churned the creative locomotive, as he produced 153 comedic short sketches, stand up routines, rants, and music parodies as Delicious Bath Water. Hatcher created content that set the tone during YouTube’s infancy and placed himself amongst the pioneers of the platform’s pre-industrialization era with creators like AsaTheComic and Donald Glover’s sketch group, DerrickComedy. You can feel the Chappelle Show’s influence in his first dozen videos, as Hatcher riffs on the late-2000s zeitgeist from offering his commentary on celebrities like R. Kelly, O.J. Simpson, and Michael Vick to skits interviewing T.I. about his gun charges, Interviewing Rampage “the Internet Thug”,—and recounting a story about carrying his purse to the club.
(Will Hatcher in his first Delicious Bath Water upload iRant: They Stole My Palm Trees)
Delicious Bath Water’s sketches came into their own around the time the audience first got up close and personal with him in, “Q&A with Will Hatcher”. Talking about those early scetches, Will said “Usually I’ll be walking or fighting crime and an idea will come to me, they’re spontaneous, like God said, ‘Let there be Funny’.” On his channel name, which foreshadowed the bath water selling trend popularized by Belle Delphine and Sydney Sweeney, he says, “When guys say I’ll drink your bath water, to get a woman, it got me thinking, what does bath water taste like? Is it delicious?” As his channel grew, he deepened his recurring characters. Their development set Hatcher’s writing apart, identifying his comedic tone distinctly from influences Paul Mooney, Patrice O’Neal, and Chappelle.
(Shipp Northridge interviewing T.I.P in ‘TI Speaks Out’)
A sit down with ‘Darnell “No Homo” Winfrey’ discussing the origins of the phrase in “The Evolution of ‘No Homo’” led to his character Leon’s endorsement of GayThugDating.com in his video “Gay Thug Dating”. The video is about a gay dating site, “your favorite rapper might have a profile on” that promotes itself as “‘No Hetero’. All gay, all the time.” Later, we’re spliced into Hatcher’s phone conversation with Florida comedian Todd Shoes, where he confesses to Shoes: ‘When I’m chilling with my girl, I think of you…’” Around the one year birthday of Delicious Bath Water the channel passed 10,000 subscribers. Commemorating the milestone Hatcher stunted in his “Chopper City Suit” ensemble built for him overseas in England. The suit is reminiscent of Carmelo Anthony’s draft day attire, a rare one of just 300, the other 299 allegedly owned by Chopper, and is allegedly worth enough to pull America out of a recession and fund a space shuttle. The suit’s swag gets him everything from a fresh cooked filet mignon, VIP access while DJing the party, and the winning lotto numbers. In another sketch he parodied the infamous rant made by Making the Band’s Kevin Barnes who was an actual Chopper City member, a sketch that sparked Barnes’ to confront Hatcher at a comedy club, as comedian Karlous Miller recalls. He honors McDonald’s Value Menu for Black History Month in “Thank You McDonald’s” and gets bullied for money by Sprint’s debt collectors in “Bullying” two sketches showcasing Hatcher’s absurdist humor.
(Will Hatcher Stuntin’ Hard in his Chopper City Suit)
A few videos on the channel exclusively place Hatcher behind the camera as the director. Starting with a series of videos titled, ‘Puffy is Poison’ featuring comedian Maronzio Vance, lampoons producer Sean Combs for poisoning the lives and careers of everyone he’s ever worked with. It has aged incredibly well as you can imagine. Vance remarks on the careers of Craig Mack, 112, Total, Day 26, Shyne, Biggie, and, “The goddamn L.O.X, man” to name a few. He also recorded comedians behind the scenes at his stand-up shows which became ‘The Green Room,’ a two-part series guest-starring Malik Sanon, Sean Grant, and Talent, where they joke about the sex appeal of their relatives and attraction to Trey Songz—until one comic takes it too far, clearing the room. He kept the variety and the quality of his videos equally high.
That being said, a majority of uploads from Delicious Bath Water are songs or song parodies. Following the success of “Crank Dat Homeless Man”, Hatcher leaned further into the cadence and bar matched parodies he’s been crafting since a child. After interviewing him in ‘T.I. Speaks Out,’ he parodies ‘Whatever You Like,’ flipping it to ‘You Cannot Spend the Night’—a song admonishing his [new?] girlfriend for her incontinence. And in tribute to Zack, the Black Power Ranger, Whip Ass Willie records over Lil Wayne’s ‘Lollipop,’ haphazardly throwing Dragonfly Jones–style kicks and punches in his parody ‘Judo Chop’. With his love for comedy rivaling his love for music, he wallows an ode to Ja Rule over The O’Jays’ ‘Brandy (I Miss You),’ belting, ‘The R&B thug you gave us, “Murda Love,” and 50 [Cent] took your career away…’ in the song ‘I Really Miss You, Ja Rule.’ Hatcher even co-founded a rap group, Abraham Linkin. They became the comedy duo behind the viral ‘I Got It at Ross’ who also premiered their short film ‘Abraham Linkin: Bitch What You Thinking’ at the Austin SXSW film festival in the early 2010s. Creative differences led to a split at the group’s peak, Hatcher pivoted, continuing to hone his recording process.
(Will Hatcher in his first viral parody Crank Dat Homeless Man’)
His rapid outpouring of music happened after Hatcher adopted Lil Wayne’s punch-in recording style. ‘Comedy freestyle recording was hard at first, but once it clicked I saw why Lil Wayne—and so many rappers now—do it.’ He is clearly a huge Wayne fan. Longtime fans will remember ‘iRant: A Bootleg From Earl,’ where he gets scammed out of his copy of Tha Carter III and instead is stuck with a 60-minute bootleg cassette of ‘somebody named Earl talking about his truck’. My theory is that ‘Wayne’s Secret Stuff’ rap powers were siphoned into his alter ego Yung Dick.
In short, Yung Dick is the greatest rapper alive, to ever live, ever which even Jay Z allegedly agreed with. The son of singer Little Richard, born in “Brooklyn, California, Sao Tome and Principe”, Yung Dick is swagged out in his usual attire of a jacket and grills. We first met Yung Dick in the Yo! MTV Raps–style Q&A video “Who Is Yung Dick???” This persona feels less like a character and more like the physical embodiment of Hatcher’s signature comedic ethos. “You want Yung Dick? You know where to find me—I’m in the trap house, practicing karate”, Dick freestyles. He is also the leader of the Dick Ryderz, first debuting with two mixtapes—Get Dick or Die Tryin’ and United States of Dick. Hatcher’s wit, funneled through the Yung Dick alter ego, led to nearly 30 uploads of vlogs and songs on Delicious Bath Water and more than 50 uploaded to his own channel, YungDickTV. The Dicks on Deck label head produced albums like, Dicktopia, Dick God, Y U No Swag Me Out, and Shit Music Volume 1. Early Yung Dick tracks were cadence-bar matched parodies of 2010s rap hits—‘Day ’N’ Nite,’ ‘Best I Ever Had’, and ‘Swagga Like Us.’ The comedy truly hit another level when Dick began releasing non-parody singles: ‘My Jeans Are Tighter Than Y’all’s,’ about his ball-hugging skinny jeans; ‘Drive Thru Love’ and ‘Operator Lady,’ love letters on falling in love with the voices of women working retail jobs; Welcome to Swag City a song Hatcher made to Kanye West’s ‘Say You Will’, ‘Booty Fingers,’ about the residue left on his partner’s fingers after playing with his ‘Groceries’, and ‘Dance For a N*gga’, a followup to his controversial hit record ‘Dance B*tch Dance’. The mix of Hatcher’s commentary on rap as Yung Dick and legitimately hilarious comedic rap is why Delicious Bath Water’s comedy style has had such a long lasting impression.
(Yung Dick, The Hardest Most Jacked Rapper freestyling over Swagga Like Us)
In his Life With Machines interview hosted by Baratunde Thurston, Hatcher recalls a comment left on his Delicious Bath Water channel asking, ‘Where have you been?’—responding, ‘I’ve been right here.’ It’s true; the train never stopped, you just gotta catch up from wherever you got off. He was particularly frustrated by shadow-ban on his YouTube channel which limited each upload’s reach to existing subscribers and smothered discovery for new ones. The channel topped 10,000 subscribers in its first year and sits at 16,000 years later (his KingWillonius Channel has 42,000 subs). As a result his later skits “Schmoney Talk”, “Wakanda Sometimes” and “Black Superhero Problems” have not received the recognition of his earlier work. To Hatcher, it was time to pivot to writing. He wrote ‘the most important book since the Bible,’ Look Like a Man, Act Like a Bitch—a set of ten principles used by successful individuals throughout history, as taught to him by his dog Lady Bark Bark. Focused on writing, he developed 18 comedic audio dramas on Clubhouse with hits like Throat Baby: The Musical. Music remained core: from his early comedy albums Life on Real N*gga Road and No Budget has given birth to his recent Udio influenced run—UNSerious, LEGLAZE, and an R&B released album this summer titled city boys need love too. He says of his recent albums, “now I can do things on a much higher level.”
With more than twenty years of comedy writing and songwriting, he’s already on my Mount Rushmore of comedic rappers. He recently tweeted, “Imma go down as one of the greatest comedians of all time. Watch,” a prophecy that feels within reach if he can find the right audience. Funnily enough he had arguably the biggest moment of his career fairly recently, when the ‘greatest rapper the universe has ever seen’ wound up the unlikely winner of the beef between Drake and Kendrick. Yung Dick’s signature jacket, and gold jewelry are hidden in plain sight on the ‘BBL Drizzy’ cover art. Since the days of ‘Puffy is Poison’, Will Hatcher has been going in…No Diddy.
Raised on a ban against the word ‘can’t’, Hatcher transmutes his wisdom through Yung Dick’s unfiltered voice. He preached a line I’ll never forget “You gotta fuck your dream, otherwise, somebody else gonna fuck your dream. That’s how people succeed in life, they fuck their dream and don’t let anybody fuck their dream up” in the cult classic video “Year of the Dick”. There are plenty of recent comments under Delicious Bath Water’s videos from returning viewers having a laugh at a line that still loops in their head. The line that always brings me back to Hatcher’s channel is, “Swaggalicious swagga plus I got clout…Yung Dick…disrespect I put my last name in your mouth. Jack it”
In his one-year channel-anniversary upload “Happy Birthday Delicious Bath Water!!!”, Hatcher says, ‘I had a dream that one day I would make millions of people across the world laugh. I think I accomplished that. I could stop now, but I’m not.’ The train’s destination hasn’t changed: one of the greatest of our generation. I steady myself, a little starstruck, and begin our conversation saying…
(BBL Drizzy Original Cover Artwork)
GSC: I went back and watched every upload on Delicious Bath Water, there are so many gems, some I don’t remember watching before.
KW: I was experimenting a lot at that time, and I was throwing stuff up. It wouldn’t all necessarily catch but I felt like at least I still got to create it. So thanks for checking that out and doing your research, man.
GSC: There is a trail from the Delicious Bath Water Youtube channel to The Young & The Thirsty Youtube channel. If you’re somebody who kept up from the very beginning until now you would have been able to follow the trail. You mentioned somebody commenting on Delicious Bath Water asking, “Where have you been” and you responded, “I’ve been right here”. It’s true, there’s never been a break.
KW: I was talking to one of my friends about it, and to me it just felt like nothing’s working. And he was like, ‘Nah man, that was your incubation period. That was a period just to be low with it, not really be out, but just getting better at your craft.’ It helps because as artists, you need that time period to just work and get better and not really think about numbers and all these things. Because I wasn’t getting any numbers, it was like I got to keep making stuff. I was going hard man, I was doing everything I could at the time. I was uploading so many songs on SoundCloud.
GSC: Since you mentioned SoundCloud, I wanted to center our conversation around your earlier work as Delicious Bath Water and music as Yung Dick.
KW: I’ve never really talked about that period. I made Delicious Bath Water, when I was so much younger. YouTube shadow banned me, and so that was a big reason for putting a lot of stuff out other places. I was always thinking about starting a new channel, but I guess I didn’t have the full passion behind it because I just figured they were going to shadow ban me again. So I never really fully leaned into YouTube again. It wasn’t until I got on ClubHouse where it felt like I had an audience again. For me, knowing who I’m creating for is really helpful. Earlier, on YouTube I knew I had a group of people that liked my work as I was still early in figuring things out. Then when I got on ClubHouse I knew I had a group of people that liked what I was making on ClubHouse. Now it’s kind of similar, people like this AI music or whatever, so it’s like okay I’ll keep going with that because there are some people who appreciate it.
GSC: In some of your interviews, the interviewer will casually mention, ‘Back in 2007 you went viral with ‘Crank That Homeless Man’, and that’s the extent of it. But for me that’s the period of your artistry I fell in love with.
KW: I’m really excited about doing this interview, because I’ve never really gone down the path of talking about stuff I did in the past. And at the time those things I was doing were super important. There was creatively a lot of growth happening there, the Yung Dick stuff I felt was really creative. I grew a lot as an artist doing all those songs. I was going hard, making songs as Yung Dick. Just the fact of changing my voice to make the songs. It was fun to pop out the grill, when I would rap. That was a fun period of time for me so I appreciate you acknowledging it.
GSC: I saw this right before getting on the call so I wanted to ask, do you know when you started your Delicious Bath Water YouTube channel?
KW: Hmm…I want to say 2007.
GSC: 2007 is correct. Do you want to take a guess on the month and day?
KW: I want to say I do not know the day. But I will say it was probably in July 2007.
GSC: It was July 2007! Okay do you want to try to guess the day then?
KW: Was it the 27th?
GSC: I thought I was going to teach you something. But that’s exactly right. Delicious Bath Water is turning 18 this week (recorded July 23rd, 2025).
KW: It is the 27th?! The number just popped into my head. I figured it was 2007 because I made ‘Crank That Homeless Man’ a couple months later. I made my YouTube channel because I was trying to make short films at the time. I went to this trade film school over the summer to learn how to make short films. I enrolled for the summer session, and that year all the instructors quit. We had a screen writing teacher, and then everybody else for directing, shooting, all of that stuff was being led by one dude that was trying to teach it all. I made a short film that got accepted into a couple film festivals. Then I wrote another short film, and at that film school you’re supposed to get a lifetime use of the equipment. But again, so many things were happening at that trade school at the time. YouTube was emerging, so I decided to start putting my stuff out on YouTube. The short film I ended up taking down but it was called, ‘The Convicted Counselor’, about this convict who would have to do community service with all of these interesting characters. He was trying to get parole by giving back to the community. It was my first time writing and producing and directing something. But when I couldn’t get use of the equipment for the second short film, I decided to just start uploading to YouTube. That’s pretty much how YouTube started. A lot of my stuff starts from hitting a barrier and it makes me pivot and then go another way.
GSC: And as Delicious Bath Water turns 18, that’s more time than Puffy recently got sentenced too.
KW: Yeah man, people forget about “Puffy is Poison”. A lot of people don’t know I had a big hand in that. I was the one that edited that and put it together. I approached Maronzio Vance when I met him at the comedy club. I would go hang out at the comedy club every weekend, I would sit back and try to learn, and meet different comedians. I met Maronzio when he was on tour with Paul Mooney. Every time he would come into town we would hang out, and I was seeing my YouTube stuff was starting to take off. So I was like, let’s do a rant or something. I’ll just record you, and you rant about a subject, and then I’ll chop it up and put it out. It was just my way of trying to help another comedian because I was doing well online, at that time everything that I was putting out was getting engagement. And Maronzio was helping me out as a young comedian, so I was like this is a way maybe I can return the support.
(Maronzio Vance in Puffy is Poison directed by Will Hatcher)
GSC: With every upload getting attention, I wanted to know what made you go upload the style of video you were making, rants, skits, and parodies?
KW: Part of it was just, there wasn’t a lot of content on YouTube. I remember this dude David Spates, AsaTheComic, and Kevin Craft, I was looking at what they were doing. And I wasn’t really trying to mimic them but it felt like they were my peers on YouTube at the time. Asa, David and Kevin were doing a lot of skits, and I really just wanted to keep doing stuff. You have people that enjoy the stuff you’re doing so I was like let me just keep making stuff. It kind of reminds me a lot of this AI stuff at this time right now, it’s just like let’s do things and hopefully they like it. But now I can do things on a much higher level, it sounds more professional. I’m about to drop this new R&B album, and it’s called city boys need love too. It’s sounding really good man, I ain’t gonna lie. I was working on it last night and the last couple of weeks, and it’s just coming together. To the point where some of the songs, you kind of forget they’re comedic songs. It sounds very good, it’s different from what a lot of people are used to with my Motown stuff. I decided to go into R&B and it’s sounding really good.
GSC: “Crank That Homeless Man” is one of the first videos on Delicious Bath Water, was that the first parody song you ever wrote and how was it seeing the success of your pivot from the film school to YouTube happen so quickly?
KW: It’s interesting because while being on YouTube, I just started doing stand up comedy at the same time. So I never really felt myself too much when it came to YouTube, because I was in the comedy clubs with people who are amazing. So I was just like okay, I knew I was funny on YouTube, but when I got on stage I still had a lot of work to do. That kept me from getting a big ego, you know what I’m saying? If I was just doing YouTube I probably would’ve been feeling myself or whatever. But YouTube was so new at the time, when I’m in the comedy clubs talking to these older comedians, it took them a long time to embrace social media. So they were just looking at it like this is not a real thing, you got views but who cares because nobody had really popped off or saw major success from YouTube. So it was just more for me like having an outlet to do some creative stuff. But I wasn’t looking at it like an end goal, at the time I still wanted to get into Hollywood. It wasn’t until you started seeing certain people getting success from YouTube like Bo Burnham, or Donald Glover with what he had done with Derrick Comedy, [where YouTube success started to crossover]. ‘Crank That Homeless Man’, was my first parody on Delicious Bath Water, but I’ve been writing parodies since I was like 10. I used to take fun songs and write parodies about them when I was in school.
GSC: Inspired by people like yourself and the other creators you mentioned Asa, David and Kevin, the first rap I ever wrote was also a parody. At 12, it’s hard to find what else you want to rap about, because at that age what else is going on in my life?
KW: They’re fun to write too, man. Sometimes if there are songs I felt were really negative, I’ll write a song parody about it just to twist the meaning, especially when I like the beat. I did that with “No Heart” by 21 Savage. It’s always fun to take a song and try to write a cadence and bar matched parody. Sometimes people will write a parody where the flow or the lyrics don’t match from a rhyme scheme perspective. So I always wanted to make sure that people could catch the rhythm and the cadence. If you loved the previous song the new song is still along those lines.
(Abraham Linkin in the I Got It At Ross video)
GSC: I’m pretty sure I can call you the greatest comedic rapper ever, but the only person who has any consideration over you for that spot would be “Weird Al” Yankovic, so we need you to keep going. ‘BBL Drizzy’ puts a notch in your belt that even “Weird Al” can’t touch.
KW: I would probably agree with that man. For me it was just like, I wanted a large body of work. And I think during my incubation period I made so many songs, I have so many comedy songs. But it really just fine tuned my ear for music and then also writing. In 2010 I watched the Tha Carter documentary on Lil Wayne, and that literally changed everything for me. I had just left San Francisco after making “I Got It At Ross” and me and the dude had a falling out. But I had a question, could I record comedy songs the way Lil Wayne records his music. So I was like alright well let me test it out. So 2010 was the last time I really wrote music anymore. I just started freestyle recording. It took me like a month or so just to get that muscle working. At first it was really challenging to be doing that whole freestyle recording style, but once I got it I understood why Lil Wayne and a lot of rappers now record that way, because it’s so freeing. You get in the flow state and there’s nothing like it. So that’s how I ended up recording a lot of these songs on SoundCloud. A lot of times I would go do standup and come back and start recording. Sometimes I would record 2 or 3 songs in a night, grabbing beats off of YouTube and recording, it was constant. I just ended up getting pretty good at it man, I had a couple songs here or there that I wrote, but for the most part I would grab the headphones, feel the melody, and then freestyle record. I would say about 98% of the songs on my SoundCloud are freestyle recorded.
GSC: In a lot of the Yung Dick videos, I can’t tell if those jokes were written, or if it was freestyle on camera. At the beginning of the ‘Mo Midget Ass Fo Me’, Yung Dick says, “It’s Yung Dick, AKA Mr. Treat Your Lady Like a Bitch, You Know She a Bitch Though”. And it’s said so casually, but that’s one of the funniest things I’ve ever heard.
KW: That Yung Dick period man. Part of it was trolling, part of it was I had just stopped dealing with that whole ‘I Got It At Ross’ situation. That was kind of traumatic for me at the time because I felt like I was so close. There were so many times where I felt like I was so close to making it, whatever I thought, “making it” was. The last one was with the writers strike, I got into AI because of the writer strike. Post 2020 I was doing a writer fellowship and then the writer strike happened and that made me lean all the way into AI. But that Yung Dick stuff, I was younger too and it was so freeing to mess around. Lil B was big at the time. Lil B was a bit of the inspiration when I started making the music, when I made Yung Dick that was right as Lil B hit the scene. It was also just a very interesting time in music. In 2010, Tyler and Odd Future were dropping. Wiz had some amazing stuff, there was Watch The Throne, musically it was a fun time and a lot of good music came out back then. I was just trying to do things, my life was changing so much at that time. It was an interesting time.
GSC: You talking about Lil Wayne reminds me of ‘Will Drinks Lean’. Where you drank a can of lean you got from a gas station to see if it would make you a better rapper.
KW: I did that video during the time where I just left San Francisco and I just took a job as a tour manager. Driving across the country, so I was in hotels literally every single night. And my YouTube channel at that time had pretty much been shadow banned. So that was a weird time, I’m glad I posted some of those videos because I recorded a lot of stuff I just didn’t post things. It was weird because my channel was shadowbanned, I had this falling out with this guy, and I felt out of place because I felt like I embarrassed my YouTube audience. It was a big cloud of disappointment in a sense. At the time when we were doing the Abraham Linkin stuff I felt like we were about to make it, then when everything went down I felt like I disappointed everybody. Maybe I didn’t, you know what I’m saying but that was part of the reason for not being super visible. Because I just felt like I let everybody down. I don’t think I did but that’s how it felt at the time. It just didn’t work out but that was the first time I felt so close and didn’t make it. But those are some of the few videos that I had from then, I had that one ‘Moments de Willonius’ video, I had cut my dreads, I was just trying to figure it out. I was still trying to get into Hollywood. What an interesting time bro, because you look at YouTubers, and the ones that maintain success for years you have to tip your hat to. You think about the different waves of YouTube, I was one of the early waves, then you have Spoken Reasons, HotDamnIRock, and RIP Jerry, Deshawn Raw was the next wave. They came in and had a moment, then a lot of them you started seeing less when the vine guys came to YouTube. Then the King Bach’s and those guys start to transition to Instagram with DCYoungFly and these cats start to emerge. Now with the new age wave you have Druski and the streamers and all these cats. It’s interesting to see how these waves go, but the main thing is you can’t stop.
(Willionius performing The Reason an original comedy song)
I remember when Vine happened I felt like I missed the wave. When Vine hit I was second guessing myself too much, at the time I had just become a father and got married. So I didn’t really know who I was at the time as it pertained to the comedy. I was still doing stuff trying to figure out my way online, but the main thing I was doing was record music. But as far as making skits and content like that I didn’t really know what I wanted my voice to be. I wrote a book during that time period, Look Like a Man, Act Like a Bitch. It was what it was, I felt semi-lost in a sense but I didn’t stop working. It’s like you have to keep doing stuff, but it just felt like whatever I did, didn’t have that same home run hit effect that I had when I first started on YouTube.That’s the good and the bad of making content that has a lot of numbers out the gate, because you always want to hit home runs. When really it’s best sometimes to get a base, get another base, another base, but when you come out the gate, ‘Crank That Homeless Man’, then it’s like oh shit I have to make another one. You know with ‘BBL Drizzy’, luckily I’ve been through enough. But if I would’ve come out the gate with ‘BBL Drizzy’ at 23, it might’ve been crazy. But now it’s just like cool, part of the journey, keep working.
GSC: I wasn’t aware of the backstory of the incubation period, staying consistent through each of those waves would’ve been tough even if online content was your end goal when you started. While transitioning through having a kid and getting married, that’s something else I wasn’t aware of.
KW: Not anymore. I got divorced in 2016. So I got married, got divorced, and we were married for about 4 years. That was another part of the artistic growth, but when I got married all these things happened so fast. When I got divorced, I really was lost because the person I married I had been with since I was in college. You just have to kind of figure these things out and still try to be creative. Divorce is a crazy thing because it can really affect both men and women. But for a lot of guys we have to suffer in silence and try to figure things out, even with the mental health support there is now. Creatively I kind of tried to fuel it, like when I made Thotful Love Songs my marriage was kind of rocky. Trying to think of what else I made during that time period. I was definitely making some Yung Dick stuff and I was still doing stuff at YouTube Space. I have this unreleased video with Godfrey that I never put out, I need to put that out at some point.
(King Willonius Thotful Love Songs Cover Art)
GSC: Your ‘Wakanda Sometimes’ video co-starring Godfrey is hilarious. Are you saying you still have all the footage from videos back then you could publish?
KW: That’s the one. I just never edited it. We filmed for like two hours, and then I was living in South Florida. And the YouTube Space was like, we’re wiping all our hard drives. So all I have is that little clip that’s edited with the music but we could never finish and post. I’m going to have to do something with that eventually, one of the actors in there William Stevenson passed away but Godrey and Kyle Groom are also in it, so I’ll probably do something with it. Especially now with AI I could probably do something really dope with it.
GSC: That period of content was so impactful for me. I was watching those videos as a teenager and I constantly think of videos from Delicious Bath Water, to make me laugh in order to through the day. Particularly the “Who Is Yung Dick” videos and Yung Dick vlogs.
KW: It was really fun, I remember wanting to do a parody of a rapper. At the time there were a bunch of “Lil’s” and “Yung’s” so I was going to call him “Lil Yung Lil” or something like that. But I was driving one day and thought, what if he was Little Richard’s son, “Yung Dick”. That’s how I came up with it. I feel like Yung Dick would have to do something really extreme now just because of how crazy hip hop is now. A lot of the stuff I was making back then is not that crazy now. It’s more like alright whatever, that’s one reason I stopped doing Yung Dick as much. The other is because I lost my bottom grill, I still have my top grill. I would love to see what kind of music I would make as Yung Dick today, even just to do the voice I haven’t done the voice in so long. The process of trying to record with the Yung Dick voice and make music strained my voice at first and then eventually I learned how to do it and was even able to sing with it. I made so much music because it was so fun to make but I think I only put out two albums,
GSC: I was able to find Dicktopia, DICK GOD, Some Shit I Pulled Out My Ass, and Shit Music Vol 1.
KW: I think my favorite song is probably still ‘Drive Thru Love’, I made the music video for that. That was a fun video to make. That was such a fun time period.
GSC: A few quick questions regarding delicious bath water. Do you think Dr. Umar would be against buying vials of bath water from white women?
KW: I think he would, unless it was something that he was using to banish coons or something like that, if he could use it as some type of deterrent. But if it was just for him to enjoy he would go on a rant. I came out with an album dedicated to Dr. Umar earlier this year, I don’t know if you saw it.
(Yung Dick in the Drive Thru Love Music Video)
GSC: DR. UMAR SAYS ITS BUSINESS BEFORE BACKSHOTSinspired the question. Do you think an average male would be more willing to buy LeBron James’ bath water, or the bath water of an IG baddie?
KW: This one really depends on how big of a LeBron James fan they are. Probably an IG baddie just off rip, but if it’s guaranteed to be LeBron James’ bathwater. I’m saying man if you’re like. “Yo, I got the Game 7 LeBron James sweaty bath water”, somebody will buy that. Those LeBron James songs that came out on LEGLAZE: LEBRON IS THE GOATIEST GOATare so funny man, everybody was just going in glazing and supporting LeBron. I think part of it was people trolling, but part of it is that people really do love LeBron. They go crazy for him, so I would say, off rip IG baddie bathwater. But if you love LeBron you would definitely buy his bath water instead.
GSC: You have a video titled ‘KingWillonius On Greatness’, where you’re talking about the greatness of LeBron James. There’s also a Yung Dick lyric where you say, “She’s taking a shower like the Power Forward from the Miami Heat”.
KW: That’s so funny because I have to go back and listen to a lot of my work. I haven’t ever had a second listen to The Young & The Thirsty. Same thing with Throat Baby: The Musical, and that was my first big audio drama man. That changed the game for me, but I’ve never gone back and listened to these projects. So hearing the lyrics to some of these old Yung Dick songs is crazy.
GSC: I was able to find audio for The Young & The Thirsty on YouTube. But I was wondering where I could listen to Throat Baby: The Musical after learning about it. Another series I found that you worked on was your Black Twitter Inc.webseries. I loved the concept.
KW: Yeah man, we got 9 episodes of Black Twitter Inc.but there were two that never got released. This was a post clubhouse, not really knowing what to do. So I used to fly out to LA once a month and we used to shoot this series. No budget, it was just we needed to do something. So it was always just trying to do something to make things move. I wish we would’ve had a little more time to shoot these things because it needed just a little more structure, but my mindset at the time was just to shoot it and get it done. I’m glad that at the end of the day we got 9 episodes, but if we would’ve taken a little more time we probably could have gotten even more out of it with more structure. It was fun getting this thing done and trying to shoot it. I learned a lot about being on a time crunch, getting the actors together, and getting the thing done. We just made it man, it was fun. Pretty much all of those actors did my audio dramas. I did 18 audio dramas on Clubhouse, so a lot of the actors I would use over and over again. Those actors are super talented.
(King Willonius in his comedy web series Black Twitter Inc.)
GSC: Hearing you wrote and produced 18 audio dramas blew me away. You’re so prolific in the work that you do, and I imagine there’s a lot of fulfillment that comes from it. I read a quote from your Tulane Hullabaloo interview where you said, “Done is better than perfect”. I read another quote from a Childish Gambino’s New Yorker interview where he says his superpower is his “Ability to learn fast and get better at things through doing,” is that what you’re doing?
KW: Yeah, keep getting better man. We were on YouTube around the same time. He was in a different space than me but just seeing his body of work is very inspiring. I love his show Atlanta. It’s just a masterpiece of a show from the acting, to the writing, to the cinematography, and the cultural relevance of the show. I want to continue. Even though “BBL Drizzy” was amazing, I still feel like I haven’t done my real big thing yet. That keeps me motivated. At the time I was just using the tools that were available. I wanted to be working and writing for TV, so when the pandemic hit, I shifted and wanted to be a TV writer because I know how to write. And I was thinking that’ll get me into Hollywood, and then I would write for TV and make good money, yiddyadda. So I just started writing during the pandemic. I formed a group that would meet every Saturday and Sunday and we would get on Zoom and write scripts together. There were about 20 of us. Then when Clubhouse came around they did The Lion King. I remember walking on the beach one day and I was like I should make audio dramas. I have all these scripts I just wrote. For my first one I wrote a spec script for Insecure season 5 Episode 1, after Season 4 ended, and people were excited because they were eager for Season 5. After I did that it made me feel like I wanted to do it again because it fulfilled me creatively, I got to build something. The next one was Throat Baby: The Musical and that was the talk of the app. It was this whole hip-hopera type joint, based on a black version of Romeo and Juliet, and it did really well. I told myself I’m going to start doing an audio drama every month. So I did one based on Atlanta, it’s Steve Urkle and Darius, but what if Steve Urkle was evil. I imagined Steve Urkle kind of being like Rick from Rick and Morty. Because they kind of clowned Steve but Steve was a genius, so if he was really that smart he would be a mastermind and that could be kind of evil. He’s smarter than everybody. He’s building all these robotic contraptions from his basement in high school. So take Family Matters andput it in the Atlanta universe, what does Steve look like? What do the rest of them look like? Steve was this underground kingpin living in the woods in this modest home, but he was really running everything in Chicago but you just think he’s a nerd. You find this out, Darius goes there because Darius is his cousin. You know Darius is always just buying random things, so he goes to buy one of Steve’s machines, and Steve takes him Training Day style about Steve’s secret life. I can send you the script for that if you ever want to read it.
GSC: Please do. I’ve heard you talk about your relationship with Steve Urkle’s character in Family Matters in your interviews and Atlanta is one of my favorite shows. You’ve blended one of my favorite childhood shows with one of my favorite shows of all time.
(Willonius Hatcher’s ClubHouse Comedic Audio Drama, Atlanta’)
KW: At the time I was trying to break into TV writing, so I was just trying to write as much as I could to satisfy people on Clubhouse with the audio dramas, and to just be creative. When you’re breaking into writing people are like, write a spec script. But I was like okay, I don’t just want to make a spec script I want to make these audio dramas. And Lakeith Stanfield used to come on Clubhouse, he actually pulled up to the Atlanta premiere. So I was like this might be a cool opportunity to make something, I made that and that was one of my favorite audio dramas. That was a really fun script to make. There was no AI back then, so paying people to make cover art for the audio dramas would add another layer to it.
GSC: Was Carl Winslow in it?
KW: Yeah! I wish we still had the audio from that audio drama. It’s one thing to have the scripts but these are audio dramas, so people are acting them out and we had a sound board. Very similar to The Young & The Thirsty, the Atlanta parody came out before The Young & The Thirsty but when I created the Atlanta script was when sound started to get better on Clubhouse. This was the first one that I made where there were really good sound effects. Throat Baby: The Musical was cool and it got really popular but it was still the early days of Clubhouse so there were leniency issues. With The Young & The Thirsty I had to do 11 straight weeks of making 11 episodes, 30 pages of writing, plus having a week to put it together and all of that. So I just told myself and I told everybody the end goal is to be better at the end of week 11 then we are in week 1. For me mentally, I was focusing on the end goal. There were some days bro, I would finish the script like 30 minutes before it was time for production. Luckily we were on Clubhouse, so people can read it off their phone, and I’m working with talented people that knew my flow. But I tried to do at least 5 drafts of every episode. You know, when you finish on Sunday you have to take a little break, or something like that but at the same time you have to have the next episode ready by the next Sunday. So I was just going HAM writing, but I found my flow. During the process of doing The Young & The Thirsty as you listen to the episodes they get better as you go on sound design wise. We had a couple hiccups because people are working for free, and episode 4 or 5, I had to do the sound because our sound guy was out.
Then some people flaked, that was the first time I got mad. But I poured it into my work, because I was like y’all wouldn’t have done this to me if I was Dave Chapelle. Y’all would’ve showed up to my show, so that really made me lock in. The next episode after that was so much better, and that was the kick that I needed to take the show in another direction. The writing got better, the sound design got better, I started introducing new characters. I was like, “Okay whoever shows up, I’m going to write something for you”. Literally I was writing in real time somebody could show up and be like, “I want to be in “The Young & The Thirsty”, and it was like alright cool I’ll write a character for you. Writing soap operas is fun man, I can see why they go on for 20 years.
The scene starts, something happens and then you end the scene on a cliff hanger. You come in. Hey you making dinner? Great. Then it’s like, “Yo why didn’t you tell me you got such and such pregnant?” Then that’s the scene. And every scene is like that, it just ends on this dramatic cliff hanger. During The Young & The Thirsty it’s obviously audio and you can’t see their faces but that was the structure. That was such a fun thing to write man, because it started out so soap opera-like, then it turned into this action soap opera, it got crazy. Then we had some Aunt Viv-like characters switches. One of the actors just couldn’t make it anymore, he does stand up. My boy Martin Morrow, but then he came back and did another character. He’s in all my audio dramas, one of my good friends. He’s so talented. One episode he and my boy Austin did three or four characters in a production. But that was just me making content with my homies. That was the whole premise behind Black Twitter Inc. That is what I want to do, you see Adam Sandler, Judd Apatow, Kenan Ivory Wayans, they just have their family and friends and make stuff with them. My friends are talented, so eventually I’ll get there. You just keep working.
(Willonius Hatcher’s ClubHouse Comedic Audio Drama, Young and The Thirsty)
GSC: There isn’t a better summary for you than those two statements you made. Eventually you will get there, and you will keep working. You tweeted recently, “I’m going to go down as one of the greatest comedians of all time”. In my opinion you’ve already achieved that with the greatness of Yung Dick, and for others you’ve achieved that from the greatness of ‘BBL Drizzy’, but hearing you speak about your work, and what motivates you I’m excited to see what it looks like when you achieve that goal through your own lens.
KW: You just want to keep pushing man. When I made that ‘BBL Drizzy’ video I made sure to tie in, “Hey I’ve been doing these song parodies for a while, I made Crank That Homeless Man.” Because “Crank That Homeless Man” was a moment for a lot of people in the same way. It was cool to be able to have two interesting cultural moments, well there’s Yung Dick, “BBL Drizzy”, “Crank That Homeless Man”, “Puffy is Poison”. I was never a part of Hollywood, so it’s crazy to be able to have that size impact outside of Hollywood. I could’ve never dreamed of the type of impact on the scale of ‘BBL Drizzy’. You always want to be able to do things that impact the culture. Now when I work with famous people, and people who work in the music industry, I know that they know that song. Because of that song, most people I meet, whether or not they know it, know of my work.
GSC: There’s a series of videos on Delicious Bath Water called ‘The Green Room’.
KW: Yeah I was pulling up on comedians just to shoot stuff. At this point I was just trying to do anything to create relationships to try to break in. ‘The Green Room’ series was just me hanging out in the green room and I told comedians let me just film you and I’ll chop it up. That’s one thing I think is definitely a gift or talent, if I have some footage I can kind of figure out how to make a story out of it.
GSC: I can attest to that. All of the Delicious Bath Water videos feel like you caught lightning in a bottle with just your camera and an idea. Do you recall your ode to Ja Rule?
KW: I really miss you Ja Rule, missing you everyday, I really miss hearing you say, “Shmurda!” I shot that on my Panasonic DVX100. I miss that camera. Yeah, oh my gosh man, that’s interesting. I wonder what type of comedy I would have made if I grew up in the TikTok generation. If I was 20 now, with all this accessibility, what type of stuff I would be making.
GSC: I don’t want to hold you for too much longer.
KW: We definitely could do part 2 of this. I’m really enjoying this, this is probably one of the best interviews I’ve done. You know, I do enjoy talking about ‘BBL Drizzy’ and all that stuff but it can get redundant. So to go back and look at the journey, because I don’t really think about it a lot. I’m always so focused on trying to do the next thing, so the fact we can go through all of this has been really cool.
GSC: Before I get you out of here I wanted to interview Yung Dick and ask if he thinks these things are ‘swag’ or ‘not swag’. Anthony Black and Gradey Dick’s jersey swap?
YD: That’s swag. That’s swag man, that is so funny.
GSC: The Oklahoma City Thunder, swag or not swag?
YD: I would probably say it’s a little bit of swag there. They’re cool. I’m wondering what angle I would take. There are probably a lot of puns, I could probably pull from Shai-Gilgeous Alexander and all of that, it would be funny to make a song about them. Now that you’ve been bringing up Yung Dick I was like I got to get my recording equipment man, to either bring it back, or make some Yung Dick AI songs. That would be kind of hard. Yung Dick and the Dick Ryders, I don’t know if we do hip hop or if we do a whole new genre, but that would be fun to bring it back. I have one of the Yung Dick songs on Spotify, ‘Booty Fingers’. Man I love ‘Booty Fingers’, I used to perform that a lot. It might be fun to do an R&B version of that, take the lyrics and transform it.
GSC: Drill rap, swag or not swag.
YD: Definitely swag, if I get Yung Dick on some drill beats that would go crazy.
GSC: Samuel L. Jackson, swag or not swag.
YD: Oh he’s the GOAT man. He’s swag as hell.
GSC: The Jackson 5, swag or not swag.
YD: Swag.
GSC: Jackie Robinson, swag or not swag.
YD: Swag, apparently that’s my cousin. We’re related.
GSC: That’s hilarious, that makes the question even more relevant. Jack Black, swag or not swag?
YD: Swag, he’s hilarious man. And a great song writer, but he also makes great comedy music as well.
GSC: Dickies Jackets, swag or not swag.
YD: Swag, I don’t know why I didn’t jump into the Dickies outfits. Oh my gosh, that was right there, I should’ve been wearing Dickies the whole time. Oh my gosh, I did not think of that…damn!
GSC: The Ball Brothers, swag or not swag?
YD: They’re swag. They influenced one of my biggest songs. They’re cool, man. I’m really happy for LiAngelo man, being able to find his lane with music. That’s super dope. You have to give it up to their daddy, three successful sons, two in the NBA and one with a great rap career. As much as people tried to clown Lavar he did something right.
(King Willonius’ Tweaker Cover Art)
GSC: I love them, and I definitely agree I think he’s actually a good artist. I think it started with people trying to troll him, then it turned into everyone being like…’Oh’.
YD: Yeah, you can’t deny it. The music is actually really good.
GSC: Cooper City Suits, swag or no swag?
YD: That’s super swag!
GSC: Dick shaming, swag or not swag?
YD: Not swag. Unless somebody is being a dick and you need to shame them.
GSC: ‘Bo’niecee’, swag or no swag.
YD: Oh swag, swag to the maximum. ‘Bo’niecee’ I love that name man. I should’ve made more stuff with Bo’niecee. Maybe that’ll be the next Yung Dick album. “Bo’niecee, I wanna eat your whopper.”
GSC: That song, ‘Drive Thru Love’ as you mentioned, and ‘Operator Lady’ which is just about a woman who works at a call center. I love how you put out a visual for that song even years after its original release.
YD: That was just the fun part about making these songs, trying to be clever with the word play. I would pull up about three of four beats and then I would just try to make three or four songs in a night. I have so many songs that I haven’t put out that I need to just put out on SoundCloud so they can exist there or something.
GSC: Post it on a spam page, the page doesn’t have to have your name associated with it at all.
YD: I’ll do that man, I’ll do that. That’s a good call, it’ll be fun man, because I want to hear some of those old songs sometimes. I made two albums during the pandemic, Are You There God We Need Toilet Paper, and Part Time Vegan. One dropped in April, the next one dropped in May and then from there I started going into screenwriting. From June 2020 on further I just was writing scripts.
GSC: What are your thoughts on Dave Burd?
YD: Much success to him. Obviously success does take a lot of work. In my heart of hearts, being a thousand percent real, I think he was influenced by Yung Dick. Maybe indirectly, I don’t know how he got the name, it could’ve been someone told him casually or something, but I’m sure he saw that and took parts of it and switched up others. But I don’t really trip about that because I just think that ideas are infinite, he took it and made a whole career from it and has fans. I’m never really the type to think this is my last great idea, because if I had been on that or been upset about it I wouldn’t have ‘BBL Drizzy’. While he was doing his thing I was thinking I probably could’ve done that with Yung Dick. Or maybe not, who knows. But with ideas, all artists get inspired by looking at something.
GSC: You’ve been inspiring artists way before ‘BBL Drizzy’. If you’ve ever seen Tyler, the Creator’s character, Young Nigga he’s definitely inspired by Yung Dick. Obviously Odd Future was heavy on YouTube around that time.
KW: Lil B was following me, so I felt like Lil B knew about Yung Dick. But yeah man, that’s how it goes. You inspire people, people inspire you and you keep working. It’s the synergy, I have to go out, I’ll see paintings, I’ll see buildings, I’ll see people interacting and I draw inspiration from that. There’s enough for everybody in this world. There are people who blatantly just try to steal stuff, but I just feel so creative I was just like I’ll come up with something bigger and better.
(King WIllonius in the Booty Fingaz music video )
GSC: What do you have to say to the Dick Ryders
KW: To my Dick Ryders, thank you for the support. Keep jacking it.
Follow Will Hatcher on Instagram, YouTube, SoundCloud, and Twitter to stay tuned aboard the train and follow his journey towards his destination.
(The Man Behind the Greatness, King Willonius Hatcher)
