{"id":726003,"date":"2026-06-09T21:20:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-09T21:20:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/726003\/"},"modified":"2026-06-09T21:20:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-09T21:20:09","slug":"matt-damon-talks-rapping-as-the-nomad-for-get-blue-the-odyssey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/726003\/","title":{"rendered":"Matt Damon Talks Rapping as The Nomad for Get Blue, The Odyssey"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tOver the course of his career Matt Damon<\/a> has portrayed characters stranded on other planets (Interstellar, The Martian), super-spies (the Bourne trilogy), racing legends (Ford vs. Ferrari), and crooked cops (The Departed), and later this summer in Christopher Nolan\u2019s The Odyssey<\/a> he will play one of the most famous characters in literary history.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut first, he needs to try his hand at rapping.<\/p>\n

\n\tDamon on Tuesday debuted an alter-ego, \u201cThe Nomad\u201d (it\u2019s \u201cDamon\u201d spelled backwards, get it?), who, in partnership with Grammy award-winning artist and producer Hit-Boy, alongside producer, songwriter and DC Teddy Walton, gives rap a try as part of the launch for Get Blue, a new initiative<\/a> from water.org, founded by Damon and Gary White.<\/p>\n

\n\tYou can watch \u201cThe Nomad\u201d at work here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tGet Blue is trying to end the global water crisis by partnering with major brands like Starbucks, Gap and Amazon to help get water to families who need it most by offering unique products which will help fund the campaign.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Hollywood Reporter sat down with Damon and White Tuesday morning in Manhattan to discuss the initiative, Damon\u2019s burgeoning and likely short-lived music career, and why young consumers seem excited to be returning to movie theaters, just in time for The Odyssey.<\/p>\n

\n\tMatt, Gary, thanks for talking with me. Can you help me understand what the origin of Get Blue is, and how it connects to what you guys are doing with water.org?<\/p>\n

\n\tGary White: Richard Dickson [president and CEO of Gap] sat down with us about a year and a half ago, actually, and we kind of hashed this idea together. He was very passionate about making sure Gap has a really solid place inside of culture and the demographics that are important to them, and that just kind of started the wheels turning, and then we wanted to have something that would allow anybody to get engaged in different ways, and through the brands and their generosity, they\u2019ve created all these different products that \u2014 just making a choice for the blue hoodie gets $5 to water.org and we turn that into safe water for people. <\/p>\n

\n\tAnd then Starbucks came on board with the matchas [two coconut-flavored drinks], Ecolab, in terms of a business to business way, and Amazon through Amazon Music, they\u2019ll have a playlist where, when you stream it, that generates a donation to water.org and you can tell Alexa to donate to water.org and they\u2019ll donate on behalf of the person, so there are all these great ways to allow people to take action in very simple ways, and that\u2019s key to it: What can you do in your everyday life that\u2019s not a heavy lift, but you can still change somebody\u2019s life halfway around the world.<\/p>\n

\n\tMatt Damon: And $5 is, with our programming, what it takes to get somebody clean water for life, so with something like that, there\u2019s a one to one relationship to what you\u2019re buying and who you\u2019re impacting.<\/p>\n

\n\tI\u2019ll ask about the music side in a second, but I did want to touch on the brands that you\u2019re partnering with, because when I saw the list, Gap, Starbucks, Amazon, these are blue chip brands that, everyone knows and interacts with on a regular basis. What went into finding the right launch partners?<\/p>\n

\n\tDamon: Richard really was was instrumental, and he convened all of these brands out in San Francisco, and did a working session with them all, and was just trying to troubleshoot ways to get people involved, and that\u2019s how everybody kind of started. This is kind of the founding group of partners, and they took the lead in saying, all right, what are our strengths? What\u2019s the best way for us to engage with this? So it\u2019s not prescriptive at all, and we\u2019re looking to attract more people to bring them on, and use this as an example of how these these companies are doing completely different things, but for an issue like this, which is really hard to get purchase in our culture, because it\u2019s not really relatable for those of us who grew up here, and yet it\u2019s this problem that affects one in four human beings on the planet. What\u2019s wonderful about this is because of the size of the platforms of these companies, these access points are different, and so hopefully they\u2019ll start appearing in people\u2019s lives in different ways, and it\u2019ll hopefully raise it in the collective consciousness.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhite: I think we chose them and they chose us, right? So what\u2019s really interesting is that each of these partners had been working with us at water.org for a while, so they vetted us, they vetted our solution, and what we\u2019re doing, and they felt really good. Even before this campaign, this group of partners has helped us reach millions of people with access to water, they\u2019re donating millions of dollars already, even before we started this, so there was already a natural affiliation that, if we get into this campaign with you, it\u2019s really going to work. People are really going to get water, and we can back that up.<\/p>\n

\n\tOn the music front, the two things I wanted to touch on are using music to engage people through culture, and then The Nomad, which I\u2019ll ask about in a second. But on the first front, music is a gateway to a lot of things for people, it\u2019s a part of people\u2019s everyday lives. <\/p>\n

\n\tDamon: As is humor. <\/p>\n

\n\tYes, true. So, on the cultural front, how did you decide to integrate music into the larger campaign? And Where did this Nomad idea came from? How was it for you to rap?<\/p>\n

\n\tDamon: Well, you know, awkward, but I think that was the point. Music and humor are two of the best ways to cut through in culture, and so obviously, those are two places that we\u2019re, that we\u2019re trying to focus on. The Nomad thing was just a silly idea that we all agreed was silly enough that it might actually work and might get a little attention, and it\u2019s all about just again trying to find these different access points for people to just understand that this is a problem. <\/p>\n

\n\tWhen I went on my first trip abroad \u2014 it was a curated trip to learn about extreme poverty \u2014 and this is 20 years ago, that was when I was introduced to this issue, and I really didn\u2019t know anything about it, and and I was amazed at how water undergirded just about every other aspect of extreme poverty, like we were at the UNGA last year, and they had the sustainable development goals, like all 17 of them up on the wall at the Goals House, and we were looking through them and water was connected to every single one of these, so that was kind of my \u201caha moment,\u201d and that\u2019s what led me into this. <\/p>\n

\n\tIf you\u2019re raising money for AIDS research or cancer research, there\u2019s usually a family member or a friend or somebody who you\u2019re directly connected to who\u2019s affected by this, if not you yourself. It\u2019s not that way with water, and so that\u2019s been kind of a struggle for us, an ongoing one that\u2019s been front of mind for us for since we started. How do we connect at the grassroots level with people? Because once people know about it, they really want to help. Once people realize a million kids are dying every year from things that are totally preventable, they say, \u201cwell, what can I do?\u201d And so this is an attempt at an answer to that.<\/p>\n

\n\tOne of the things that I think you have to do if you\u2019re trying to draw attention to a cause like this is reach people where they are in the ways that that make sense to them, and I think music is a good way to do that. I\u2019m just curious, how you\u2019ve thought about that throughout the water.org campaign and with Get Blue, in terms of trying to find ways to kind of create something that gets people talking, that\u2019ll catch people\u2019s attention at a time, frankly, when you know we\u2019ve got more things to watch and listen to than ever before.<\/p>\n

\n\tDamon: We thought it was hard 17 years ago, it\u2019s only become harder, and I wish we had a better answer for that. You know, we tried all sorts of things. I mean, we go to these conferences, we speak on these panels, we\u2019ve done I don\u2019t know how many hours on CNBC, we gain some traction, but the larger traction that you\u2019re talking about has been elusive, and that\u2019s why we\u2019re hoping this can be something big for us.<\/p>\n

\n\t[Damon will also do a TikTok live, which started after they approached water.org at Davos] They came to us at Davos, and they\u2019ve been wonderful, it\u2019s another one of these massive companies going, okay, we know what we do well, and let\u2019s see how we can work with you and help maximize the impact. There\u2019s a knock on effect anytime these big blue chip brands are involved, there\u2019s a signal effect to everybody else to say \u201coh this is something that we that we need to engage with and be a part of.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWhite: We are entrepreneurial, we\u2019re innovative, you know, that\u2019s why what we do in terms of getting water into the world works, and it works in a big way, and this is our shot, right? We\u2019re going to go out and give it a try. Having partners like Gap, I mean, Gap, when it was founded, it was selling tapes and records, and so that\u2019s in their DNA. So, being able to partner with them, to be able to partner with with Amazon Music, we like to surround ourselves with people that are smarter than ourselves, and so it\u2019s great to have these partners to lean on to help us figure that out. <\/p>\n

\n\tMusic has always been a touchstone, we know that, you go back to the \u201960s and that was the forefront of what was changing and shaping the world, even a generation ahead, \u201cWe Are The World,\u201d it seems a little kitschy now, but that was so powerful to activate so many people, so by partnering with these partners, we hope that we can break through and give people an open door to not just buy the product, but then use that door to say, what is this water issue, and how can we be a part of the solution? Even if you can\u2019t afford $5, sharing with your network when you hear this or read about it, donating when you can, but then choosing, you know, a Get Blue product that you got to buy something anyway.<\/p>\n

\n\tRelated to that, Matt, you are in a movie coming out this summer that I\u2019m sure is going to get a lot of attention, The Odyssey, and I think it\u2019ll also draw attention to the cause that you have here with both water.org and Get Blue. There\u2019s a lot of excitement and anticipation for the film, and I\u2019m kind of curious to get your thoughts on what you think that anticipation says about people\u2019s excitement to go see a unique movie with an artistic vision from a director. The movie business seems to be having its best box office in years, we\u2019ve had some films in the past couple months that have visionary directors that kind of came out of nowhere, and they reminded me, in some ways, of [Christopher Nolan\u2019s] Memento.<\/p>\n

\n\tDamon: It\u2019s really exciting, I think. Also, this last year, looking at Sinners and One Battle After Another and Bugonia and all these movies, it feels like we\u2019re finally coming out of that COVID era, and certainly \u2014 I see it with my own kids and with their friends \u2014 there there seems to be this real desire to go back to the theaters. <\/p>\n

\n\tAnd listen Chris\u2019s work weathers everything, he\u2019s a very special director and there\u2019s a lot of anticipation for what he\u2019s doing, but this movie\u2019s coming at a really good time, where it feels like everybody\u2019s wanting to go back and enjoying going back the way that Ben and I went to the movies every weekend when we were growing up, and if a movie was sold out, we just went to whatever else was playing, it was just part of our lives, and it feels like that\u2019s coming back for this next generation, and that\u2019s really exciting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Over the course of his career Matt Damon has portrayed characters stranded on other planets (Interstellar, The Martian),…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":726004,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[6488,49,48,361,75,26831,29185],"class_list":["post-726003","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-advertising","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-matt-damon","tag-the-odyssey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/726003","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=726003"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/726003\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/726004"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=726003"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=726003"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=726003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}