BY HAZEL SHAHGHOLI
If you Google “Getty family,” you’ll
fi nd a long lineage of noble-sounding
names that tell a very American
story.
At the top is the patriarch of all patriarchs,
oil tycoon J. Paul Getty. A
shrewd investor and master of oil extraction,
fi rst from the fi elds of Oklahoma,
then Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.
J. Paul Getty was, in a sense, the man
who sold the world.
In 1957, Fortune magazine named J.
Paul Getty the world’s richest private
citizen, with an estimated $1.2 billion
in the bank, or invested in precious
objects which would come to make up
part of the Getty Museum collection.
Skip forward three generations and
you’ll fi nd Balthazar Getty, unassuming,
charitable, laid-back, friendly,
and with an encyclopedic knowledge
of music along with technical expertise
and years of experience as a DJ.
When he was 15, Balthazar Getty,
or “Balt” to his friends, many of whom
are A-list and ultra-famous, played the
lead role of Ralph in the extremely successful
90s adaptation of the classic
novel “The Lord of the Flies,” showing
a natural talent for acting beyond his
tender age.
Balt grew up in San Francisco and
LA and the old-world / new-world paradigm
could not be more apparent; he
and his sister were raised by his freespirited
mother and even spent time
living in a Zen Buddhist Center.
After years of graft and paying his
dues through DJ sets at music festivals
such as Coachella, Balt has recently
released an EP with Bronx-born, afro-
Latin supreme lyricist—and interestingly,
Mensa member— Chino XL.
Curiously, Chino is also part of a
lineage of luminaries. His uncle is
respected musician Bernie Worrell,
a founding member of the infl uential
group Parliament/Funkadelic and
keyboardist for The Talking Heads.
The EP, “Chino XL vs. Balt,” is
a balanced 5-track offering and intended
to be part of a series of EP’s of
a similar format, i.e., “Balt vs. insert
famous musician’s name.” These are
to be released throughout 2021, with
Balt keeping schtum about who his
upcoming collaborators will be. He is
also planning to step up to the mic in
a transition from the technical to performance
side.
The pandemic didn’t affect the
BRONX TIMES REPORTER, J 42 AN. 15-21, 2021 BTR
EP’s recording at all. Although they
both live in LA, Balt would lay down
the beats and melodies while Chino
XL sent over lyrics and the two were
fused together, and this was the plan
all along. They considered dropping
the EP later in the year due to COVID,
but fi gured the timeliness of Chino’s
sometimes clowning style, specifi cally
his Donald Trump references, might
lose their relevancy with the passage
of time.
Balt describes music as his primary
passion and “mystery.” Acting paid
the bills but his true devotion was to
creating new sounds and experimenting
with keyboards, samplers and the
classic E-mu SP 1200 drum machine
and sequencer from an early age.
Rap music is diversifying and being
fused in with other genres of music
and has been for years. But at its
roots, rap culture began and for a long
time was associated with the hardships
of predominately urban, low-income
people of color.
Change could be said to have began
in the mid-80s with the Beastie Boys
and hell, as recently as the late 90s
people were freaking out about whiterapper
Eminem’s place in the scene.
Gladly, we’ve all moved on from these
divisions.
But still. A Getty rapper? It’s a family
infamy that must be a tiresome
weight. But facts like, “the EP was
recorded in Balt’s studio that he purchased
from Rick Rubin,” and Balt’s
casual admission that he simply called
up Robert Patrick of “Terminator 2”
fame to play a bit-part in the slick, selfdirected
concept video for debut track
“Ethiopia,” and things start to seem…
otherworldly.
Nonetheless, “Ethiopia” is an extremely
catchy combination of Chino
XL as fast-paced wordsmith, Balt’s
smooth beats and a chorus that will be
your earworm for days.
When asked about this elephant
in the room aspect of his career, Balt
replied somewhat evasively, but with
sincerity, “What people doesn’t understand
is how I actually grew up, you
know? People make an assumption,
but I was always drawn to a rougher
crowd.” And although he does get
fairly aggressively trolled online,
he owns the reality of the response,
“What’s this old, rich, white guy doing
rapping?” But asserts how he has
largely been embraced by the rap and
hip-hop community, particularly in
LA.
Interestingly, at age 45, Balt also
intends to return to acting, revealing
that staggering misogynistic chasm
that exists in Hollywood, where
women age out whereas parts for 30+
year-old-men “become more meaningful,”
which is an interesting statement
to be made by someone who has
worked with some of the best actors of
our time, and with legendary director,
David Lynch.
In both this commentary on music
and fi lm, it is clear that Balt wants be
seen and accepted for his talent and
creativity. He hopes that showcasing
his music will add to a multi-faceted
legacy of his own, one that just not involve
just being seen “as an actor or
a celebrity or a face you might see in
the paper, but somebody that actually
does this and has been doing it a long
time you know?”
Balt does not need commercial success—“
although it would be nice, you
know, to have validation”—he wants
to prove himself, and be accepted as
Balt, not “just” Balthazar Getty. He
is driven to become more than a twodimensional
headshot on a famous
family tree. And through this inspired
collaboration with Chino XL,
and hopefully the EP’s to come, he has
done exactly this.
“Ethiopia,” the debit single from
“Balt vs. Chino” was released in mid-
December on Getty’s record label, Purplehaus
Records and the EP is available
for download on iTunes.
Balthazar beats: Getty heir on
forging a rap career, starting
with Chino XL collaboration
Balthazar Getty (L) and Bronx-born rapper Chino XL (R) Photo by Hector Medoza