S. Samuel
Virginia rap veteran Skillz has returned one last time to drop his final addition to the "Rap Up" yearly series, summarizing key events which went down these past 12 months.
Skillz starts his record focusing on Common dissing Drake, Super Bowl XLVI and the birth of Blue Ivy Carter.
“Common threw a shot at Drake but he ain’t wanna catch it,” Skillz raps. “Giants won the Super Bowl plus that whole corny madness, Linsanity had New York on fire like wasabi/And you couldn’t go anywhere, without hearing about Blue Ivy/Congrats to Jay and B, for adding to they crew/I mean why was y’all so shocked, ain’t that what married people do?/And I’m still in my hoody ’cause this violence ain’t stopping/Hope we see justice for the young and Trayvon Martin” (“Rap Up 2012”)
Later in the record, the VA vet speaks on some notable hip-hop romances and NBA superstar LeBron James winning his first championship.
“Kim and Kanye, they had us all tripping/Mary J. Blige was out here singing for chicken,” he rapped. “Drake met Chris Brown with a bottle in-between/D’Angelo came back, LeBron got that ring/Man shout-outs to D-Wade, but I ain’t need to see, that Chris Bosh facial on national tv/We doubted it at first, but couldn’t change that channel/We all got caught up, ‘Love & Hip Hop ATL'” (“Rap Up 2012”)
In early 2012, Skillz spoke to SOHH about how he puts together his annual anthems.
“Last year, I was really into some other things,” Skillz told SOHH, “I was touring, I had a big gig on New Year’s Eve [2010], so I didn’t get it done before then and I knew I wasn’t going to get it done on New Year’s Eve and put it up out and so people were going ham. You gotta understand something. Every year right after Thanksgiving when that Sunday comes around, people get back to their cribs and they’re all full, that’s when they start hitting me like, ‘I know you’re gonna do a ‘Rap Up’ this year.’ Just as much as it is a tradition for me to make the song, people hitting me up asking me about the song has become just as much as a tradition as the song. Just as you expect the ‘Rap Up,’ I expect to get the sh*t bugged outta me from Thanksgiving to New Year’s Eve about the ‘Rap Up.'” (SOHH)
He also acknowledged some hip-hop heads labeling him as only the “Rap Up” hitmaker.
“But you know what, man,” Skillz added, “when I look back at it, my first album came out in 1996 and I’m still here and I’m still making quality music. There’s still a demand for certain things that I do and there’s a lot of dudes that came out around that time that are nowhere to be found and I appreciate the fact that people are still checking for it. It don’t take me long to do it. It is what it is. I know there’s fans that only know me as the ‘Rap Up’ guy, I get it, but then there’s people who are like, ‘Oh, I didn’t know he had an album called The World Needs More Skillz‘ and ‘Oh, he’s got a track with Travis Barker. I like that joint!’ They start going back into my catalogue. It’s funny because every time the ‘Rap Up’ comes out, I see a spike in my sales on my other material. So it’s all about getting new fans. I’m appreciative every year.” (SOHH)
Check out “Rap Up 2012”:
