Posted on 07/22/2008
Skillz is something of an anomaly in hip-hop – he’s managed to maintain a healthy music career over the better part of two decades, and yet in many respects, his new album The Million Dollar Backpack is akin to a release from an up-and-coming artist.

“I realize that there’s a lot of people who have no idea who I am,” the VA-native explains on the way back from editing the video for his single “So Far, So Good” featuring Common. “I get complacent sometimes and think, ‘oh, people know me, people know this song,’ but the truth is a little different.”

Ask Skillz to break up his career into a trilogy of movie titles, and the history of his life in the public eye becomes a little bit clearer. “The first movie would be called The Introduction – me being a student of the game, learning what to do and what not do do,” he says. One can imagine it was quite a learning experience, as a quick rundown of his discography includes work with The Neptunes, Timbaland, Mos Def, Talib Kweli, and The Roots. “That phase of my life was either going to make or break me, either make me want to stop fucking with this business or encourage me to proceed my way through.”

“The second movie would be called The Learning Tree. That’s when I got into other ways to make money from the industry besides just being in front of the camera or microphone. I started learning how these companies tick, and started to pay attention to why an artist was successful when he was, and what caused other artists to flop,” he continues.

Part of that behind-the-scenes foray into the industry would no doubt include his career ghostwriting rhymes for some of hip hop’s biggest names, including P.Diddy (one of the only artists to publicly confirm this connection to Skillz). “I occasionally still ghostwrite, but I wouldn’t even call it that,” Skillz acknowledges. “It’s more songwriting, a lot of R&B stuff, dealing with melodies and harmonies. I don’t sing or play instruments, but I’m definitely an arranger – I can arrange the hell out of a song, and I’m really good at picking the right beats.”

“I still get calls from people to ghostwrite, and it’s something that you can definitely be able to eat off of,” he continues. “There’s certain people who I will stop and work on a track for, if it’s not a bad business deal and they haven’t burned me in the past.”

Besides his reputation as the ghostwriter of the industry, Skillz is also known for another one of his roles in the rap game. Since 2002, many have first been exposed to him as the man behind the helm of the popular ‘Rap-Up,’ an annual summary of all that’s transpired in the music industry over the course of a year. Being known as the ‘Rap-Up Guy’ has been a mixed blessing for Skillz.

“At this point I understand it’s a marketing tool. Some people have no idea who I am till they hear it, but once they do, they go online and find out about the rest of my songs,” he says thoughtfully. “I mean, I really can’t say. I don’t have a ‘rap-up’ out right now, and somebody is still interested in interviewing me. There have been times that I didn’t want to make a ‘rap-up,’ but I’m glad I did. I was just contacted by a major cable network about ‘rapping up’ one of their shows. They want me to write a song about all of the seasons and put it on their website and box set of DVDs. Am I going to tell them I don’t want to do a ‘rap-up?’ Hell no!”

“I think there’s a common misconception that I’m just a ‘rap-up’ guy, that that’s all I’m good for. That’s cool. If people want to only check me for that, I don’t have a problem with it; it’s not like Howard Stern is going to play ‘So Far, So Good’ tomorrow morning, not in this day and age,” he says. “The ‘rap-up’ is mine, and people only want to hear it from me, which is a blessing in hip-hop right now, to have something that is your own, even if it is only once a year. I know a lot of cats who don’t get heard from once every five years.”

All that brings us to the third and current installment in the trilogy of Skillz’s career so far, The Million Dollar Back Pack, an effort that’s been a long time in the making. “I’m a perfectionist. I’m not really one to rush music. My last album that hit the streets really hit in a manner that I wasn’t cool with – repackaged songs, a lot of which were already a few years old,” he says, referring to 2005’s Confessions of a Ghostwriter. “Where I’m at now, I’m doing things my own way. And I’ve learned that I have to pretty much act like a new artist at this point.”

“It’s an adult, really good hip-hop album,” he says of his latest effort. “I’m not reinventing the wheel, I’m just giving you a dose of what Skillz is about, what a day in my life is like.”

“I’ve been to places I’d never thought I’d be. I’m just a kid from Virginia – I’m not supposed to be onstage in Australia. I’m not supposed to be in L.A. in the studio with Will Smith, or at the BET Awards in the second row. That’s someone else’s seat!” he says with a genuine sense of humble disbelief. “I’m just the ultimate fan that knows it, and I wouldn’t change a thing about my career. Hip-hop never had to be good to me, but it has been. I could be that guy who’s out there somewhere scrambling right now, and I’m not.”

“I’m not 50 Cent, I’m not Hov, but I’m not MC Joe Schmo rapping for his manager at McDonald’s, either,” he reflects. “It’s crazy that I’ve made it this far and everything that I’ve gained through hip hop was from an idea that was in a composition book, and that composition book was in my backpack.”

- Sean Kantrowitz