SKIPPY SKIP: BACKGROUND INFO

For many years in its beginning, rap was easily the most innovative, creative, and original style of American music of its time. Even as late as 1999 or so, rappers easily had the most creative music videos on MTV. But the times have changed, and in a genre once so starkly different than anything else that was offered, so revered for its originality, early Twenty-First Century hip hop has become a desolate landscape ruled by conformity, stereotypes, predictability, and short careers. There have been times when heroic mavericks have seemed poised to begin the next wave of hip hop, and truly offer something new, but those brief moments of fame have often been drowned out by catchy odes to guns, sex, and hustling from the mindless conformity team. So where does hip hop go now if it doesn’t want to go the way of disco?

The answer may very well lie in North Carolina’s Skippy Skip, an alternative rapper in the manner of Mos Def, Talib Kweli, Common, LMNO, Jurassic 5, Lifesavas, Zion I, or Kanye West, but even more extreme and independent. In a genre where image accounts for about eighty-five percent of the music, Skippy Skip is one misfit who clearly stands out from the crowd. Clad in bold colors, long-sleeve T-shirts, athletic pants, and hiking boots, this side-burned twenty-something is far from one of the thugs, gangsters, pimps, players, or hustlers who pretend that they care about the present state of hip hop, let alone the world. He is a Renaissance man, someone multitalented, capable of virtually anything. Skip is an emcee who plays guitar, harmonica, keyboards, and percussion, as well as write and arrange all his music. He could just as easily be seen at the opera or art museum as at the mall or pub. He could know a card game just as well as he could discuss politics. Someone concerned with the environment and interested in nature, but could probably dance with five beautiful women at a party. This is the type of guy who can identify some rare species of lizard or write calligraphy, but also remembers obscure cartoons, sitcoms, and comic books from the 1990s that everyone else has forgotten.

The best part about Skippy Skip is that his musical talents don’t end with his image, in fact, that is of minimal importance when we’re dealing with rappers like him, which there just are not that many of. Rather than rounding his music off to the simple, predictable formats, Skip truly is something out of the ordinary. The typical rap song is rounded off to about four minutes, contains redundant 2-measure or 4-measure phrases, 4/4 meter, rhythms more predictable and straightforward than ever, zero harmonic development, a tempo of about 90-100 beats a minute, three verses and a chorus, plus some catchy breakdown at the end. On the other hand, the average Skippy Skip song is about six minutes long (with both versions of “Alto Cumulus” rounded off to about seven and a half minutes each), contains 2, 4, 3, 6, even 5-measure phrases (plus the occasional 14-measure format, resurrected from late 1990s alternative rock); multiple possibilities for meter (5/4 in “Alto Cumulus” and “Conical Structure,” ¾ in “Tar Heel Brook Melody“ and “Artificial Allies,” a brief section of 2/4 in the middle of “Artificial Allies” and “Martian Bluegrass,” 12/8 in “Gangsta Revisited,” etc.); syncopated and asymmetrical rhythms, multiple key changes, tempos ranging from slow and methodical to surprisingly upbeat; and three, four, or even five verses with chorus, bridge, and interlude, plus the now and then guitar, harmonica, jaw harp, or human beat box solo, not to mention the occasional motive. Virtually no other hip hop artist, save Blackalicious and a few others, is even in the same ballpark for such a format.

The simple fact that Skip raps over acoustic guitar melodies in 5/4 meter for minutes at a time (among other things), puts the young Renaissance man in a category all his own. With guitar skills that could carry the flame for Satriani, passionate emotion that could make Billy Joel and Marvin Gaye shed a tear, consciousness that could give Common a breath of fresh air and then some, and arranging skills that could impress a number of Philharmonics in the coming years, Skippy Skip is a force beyond all explanation. While Skip may not out-thug 50 Cent or Nas anytime soon, he is right now in a league all his own, hip hop’s next great phase. Finally, a true man for the Twenty-First Century.