Skyzoo: It's All Real Interview

Skyzoo has been a mainstay on the New York underground Hip Hop scene since 2005 and has not slowed down since. The Brooklyn native has earned the support of people like DJ Premier as well as 9th Wonder, who eventually signed S-K to his Jamla imprint, through Duck Down Records. The Salvation will mark the emcee's proper debut, and comes September 29th.

In an engaging discussion with HipHopDX, Skyzoo explains the magic of yesterday's Hip Hop that he keeps in his tool-kit to help make for a better tomorrow.

HipHopDX: You’ve released eight mixtapes and two LPs and are now prepping your debut…What is your favorite project so far?
Skyzoo: The Salvation. Besides it being the newest release, it’s also the one I wanted my entire life. There’s a saying: “You take your whole life to make your first album.” Since I was a kid and began rhyming, all you think about are your first album, what your cover’s going to look like, standing on stage and winning an award; this is that album. And as I got older, I thought more about what I wanted the album to consist of, what I wanted to talk about and what message I wanted to get across. All of that is this album.

DX: How was the creative process different for The Salvation versus the mixtapes you’ve done in the past?
Skyzoo: Well with the debut album, this is what it all boils down to so it was definitely more thought-out. Mixtapes are more about showing and proving, getting busy, nothing more nothing less but with the album it’s supposed to last a lifetime. You’re supposed to be able to listen to an album 10 years from now and say, “That was real,” no matter what genre of music you’re doing. My process was to get out all of the stories and emotions I ever wanted to let out.

DX: You have producers Just Blaze and Nottz on the album…Who else did you work with, and how’d you decide who made the final cut?
Skyzoo: It was me 100%, deciding what tracks made the final cut. Nobody came in and picked beats, everything from the orchestration to the sequencing of the tracklist, it was all me alone. 9th Wonder [click to read], Black Milk [click to read], Illmind [click to read] all contributed to the album. I got a few up-an-comers on there as well, like Eric G, Cyrus the Great and Best Kept Secret.

DX: Every beat sounds tailor-made for your flow and each song topic that it’s no shock you oversaw what tracks made the final cut. With so many dope producers, what was the process of elimination like?
Skyzoo: For the album I had a ton of concepts so of course, I wanted to find beats that matched what talked about. For instance, the song “Shooter’s Soundtrack,” I knew I wanted to make a record that was not preachy but that talked about how easy it is for youth to get a gun in the hood. So I wanted a melancholy, aggressive beat that was still musical. That was the main process for choosing every track that made the final cut, making sure it fully complimented what I was trying to get across.

DX: How much of the album has that '90s boom-bap influence that’s heard on your first single, “Beautiful Decay?”

Read the whole interview with Skyzoo here................
http://www.hiphopdx.com/index/features/id.1409