Will Roush: A Shadow Of His Former Self

Posted On: February 2, 2011
Posted By: odeisel
Comments: 1

By Odeisel

When faced with a rare heart disease and being 100 lbs overweight, Will Roush’s doctor told him that if he continued living a certain way there wouldn’t be much life left to live. Roush decided to stand up and change his life. He lost almost a hundred pounds and retook control of his life. Oh yeah, and he raps too. Despite his short time in business, he’s worked with Jason Derulo, JR Rotem, Young Buck and Stat Quo. Having Whoo Kid host your mixtape probably won’t hurt either. Roush talks about taking his life back and hitting the stage while trying to finish his college degree.

Full Audio Interview: Will Roush Interview Cut

Planet Ill: Super Ventricular Taphnocardio (SVT).

Will Roush: You’re the first person to ever pronounce that correctly. I’m impressed

Planet Ill: That’s a rare heart condition. If they can’t pronounce it they probably can’t understand the severity of it. How does it feel being afflicted by something like that?

Will Roush: It’s kind of like everyone in life has a different hand of cards that they are dealt. For me it was definitely a health challenge. I spent the majority of the past 21 years out of my 23 years on heart medication, avoiding surgery. And luckily, over the past two years, I’ve lost over 90 lbs. and really gotten myself into some good health and good shape and naturally just started to get off of the medication. Right now I feel great, very proud and blessed. And everyone experiences things differently.

Some people have it really bad. For me it was very bad as a kid and younger like 14, 15, 16, that age range it was tough having to sit out from playing sports and going to the doctor’s office and the hospital. The risks of it are pretty scary. But like everyone it’s just one of those things in life that you dealt that you have to deal with.

Planet Ill: What was the breaking point or the event that made you decide this isn’t how you were going to live your life?

Will Roush: The turning point was definitely…aside from having the heart condition I had the extra weight. It was really detrimental to having the heart condition but also I started to get high cholesterol and other health consequences and basically my doctor just broke it down to me. He said, “You need to lose weight or else you’re not going to be here in the long run.” I guess that fear set in from also my parents really wanting me to lose weight and get in shape for a long time.

It got to a point with myself where I was like, you know what. This is my fault I am controlling the things that I put in my body. That was definitely the turning point. A year and a half later, my waist went from a 44 to a 34. I had to get all new clothes. I went back to school after like taking four months to get in shape. I dropped like 40 or 50 pounds over the summer. When I went back to school everyone was like holy shit you look incredible. So that was really confidence-building. That inspired me to keep going even further and continue to work out and lose weight and get in shape.

Here I am now, 90 lbs. lost and I feel like a different person. It’s the best decision I ever made. Even though it was a decision of like should I go to McDonalds or Taco Bell. It was a decision every day to be healthy and work out.

Planet Ill: How does that confidence filter into your music? How much does it help you as an artist?

Will Roush: It’s huge. Music is definitely an art form and it directly reflects where the artist is at. You look at Picasso’s work or Andy Warhol’s work you can get a gauge of what they were going through at that period in time when they were working on whatever piece it is. It’s the same thing with the music. If you look at some of my older stuff, you see someone that’s jokey about like eating so much that I get kicked out of Shoney’s. And now you look at my music and I touch on the weight loss, but I don’t want to be…I’m hesitant to be one of those people that hinges on, “Oh look at me, I lost weight.” I know people like that and it’s really annoying.

Losing the weight was just one aspect of my life. I’ve had other life experiences whether it be females responding to me more often or feeling more confident enough to put myself out there to do shows and interviews and everything, It just affects everything whether you know it or not. You just feel better, you have more energy to record, I don’t feel tired. Things that you don’t even realize that are going on.

Planet Ill: How much of your music is art and how much is communication?

Will Roush: that’s a good question. I think every song is both. It’s art in the sense that you want to portray a message or a joke or a story or a metaphor, but in terms of it coming to life it needs good communication in terms of the producers that you are working with or just the musical engineer that is recording with you. So it’s all about communication at the end of the ay and having a good support system and team and I have a great group of core people that I work with on music and the communication is always there.

Planet Ill: For a new guy, you have worked with a number of high caliber people: Jason Derulo, The Fliptones, JR Rotem, Young Buck and Stat Quo. How did you get those connections?

Will Roush: My relationship with Matthew Schiltz, my executive producer/manager. He’s been in the industry for a long time and has a lot of relationships. Thank God for him because he definitely reached out to all these people to see if they would work with me and the response was really good. So it’s been some incredible, overwhelming and maybe too soon but they were good. It’s been amazing.

Planet Ill: Are you worried about people focusing more on your features than your actual music?

Will Roush: It’s funny because you’ll get a dope feature. First of all when I was working with Jason Derulo, I still have a couple of songs with him that I haven’t put out, that are crazy. And expect those soon. When I was working with Jason he was like 17, 18 and no one really knew who he was. If someone was now they’d be like, “Oh my God, this is going to get a million hits on YouTube!” That’s also something that people need to understand. He and I developed a relationship way before “What You Say” and all those songs came out. It’s been really cool to watch him grow.

But on the other end you work with someone already established like Young Buck or Stat Quo or Rock City or Bizarre From D12 and you’re so excited in the heat of the moment and obviously following after, like I got a great feature from someone who has a fan base and who has found a way to make this music thing work. It’s not really worry, because there’s nothing you can really do about it whether people are going to focus on you or on that feature.

You just have to really have confidence that you’ve done your best song and the people that are going to be your fans are going to find you in it for you. That’s a cliché answer but it really is true. For the most part you’re really pumped up about the feature that you just got and at the end of the day I’ll take a record with Jay-Z over a song with myself.

Planet Ill: Have you used your collegiate connections to build up your grass roots? Do the people you go to school with know what you’re doing?

Will Roush: I have to be honest with you, the kids at my school [Babson] they’re amazing. I sometimes think they like my music more than I do.

Planet Ill: Musically, what do you aspire to?

Will Roush: I aspire to be the best. Rapping and music are my passion I do it because I love to do it and I’ll never give up doing it. I’ll probably still be rapping when I’m 45 years old and have kids. I just love doing it. I aspire to be the best. That’s my dream. My dream is to perform in Madison Square Garden in front of a sold out crowd, not in front of two people while they’re cleaning up after a Knicks game.

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