Hip-hopper G-eazy On The Brink

Scenes from famous motion pictures, including Marlon Brando on a motorcycle in “The Wild One” and Cheech and Chong in “Up in Smoke,” play on a large screen behind G-Eazy — potentially the biggest hip-hop artist to come out of the Bay Area since MC Hammer a quarter century ago — during the first of two sold-out nights at the 999-capacity Ace of Spades club in Sacramento. Backed by a DJ and a drummer, the tall, lean rapper is dressed entirely in black as he performs numbers from his debut CD, “These Things Happen,” which has sold more than 100,000 copies since its June release. All are standing, save for a handful in the small VIP section with seats, as he bounces up and down onstage while spitting out his self-written, profanity-laced lyrics. Weeks earlier, Gerald “G-Eazy” Gillum is standing by a window in the fashionable San Francisco loft he shares with his girlfriend, singer Devon Baldwin, looking down seven stories at the corner of Fifth and Market. Robert Hilburn’s biography of Johnny Cash, who the rapper says inspired his all-black attire, rests on a coffee table. Gillum was born in Tempe, Ariz., and spent time in Reno and Fresno (where his father is an art professor at Cal State Fresno) before he and his mother moved in with his grandparents in Berkeley while he was in first grade. “Watching them go from sitting next to me in class to seeing them on MTV when I was 15 was the most surreal, inspiring thing ever,” he recalls. Gillum began making mix tapes at home with the aid of a $150 microphone and a free Internet program. Gillum refined his music while majoring in music industry studies during four years at Loyola University in New Orleans. Unfortunately, few got to see Gillum during the Lil Wayne tour because the vast majority of the audiences hadn’t arrived by the time the bottom-of-the-bill rapper opened the concerts with a 10-minute set. Released on the BGP label, the CD entered Billboard’s charts at No.