Ski Beatz Tells All: The Stories Behind His Biggest Hits

After a few delays, Ski Beatz' album, 24 Hour Karate School, finally hit stores last week. Entirely produced by Ski, it was released under Dame Dash's DD172 label, with appearances from Jay Electronica, Jean Grae, Curren$y, Jim Jones, Wiz Khalifa, and others.

Although the North Carolina native has caught a second wind as an in-house producer for Dame Dash's DD172 collective (he produced most of Curren$y's Pilot Talk), he's still probably best known for his work with acts like Camp Lo, Sporty Thievez, and Jay-Z in the ’90s.

That's why we got on the phone with him to hear the stories behind some of his classics like "Luchini," "John Blaze," and "Dead Presidents." We even got Ski to tell us how he threw away classic material, what Dame Dash's favorite Jay-Z song is, and the one beat Jay always wanted to rap over.

Ski: "We was working on Reasonable Doubt at the time. Anything I made hot, Jay was trying to have dibs on it. We [was working] every day. I was making the beat, calling him, and he was coming to the crib. I was living in Brooklyn. He was literally right around the corner from me. We lived right there by Junior's.

"The system we had, we would make music first, he would reference it in my house. Back then we was paying for studio time and we didn’t want to pay for studio time and just sit in the studio. We would do pre-production at the crib, he would go home and get the lyrics memorized even more, and then go to the studio and re-lay it. He would just get in his own place, stare into space, and next thing you know, an hour later he got a song. He just wrote them and went in the booth, it took him two or three takes at most and it was done."

"I had done 'Politics As Usual' for Jay-Z, but Camp Lo wanted the beat because of the horns. And they was like, 'Yo how you gonna give that beat to Jay-Z? What about us? You always giving Jay the dope beats!'"

Ski: "I was at this DJ event, like one of those 'How Can I Be Down?' events in Florida. Nas' Illmatic had just come out. And I was just listening to 'The World Is Yours.' I just fell in love with the pianos. Once I felt that vibe, I just went searching for anything with a piano that made me feel like that. Soon as I heard the piano, I was gonna fall in love.

I was just digging and digging, and I found that Lonnie Liston Smith joint ['A Garden of Peace'] and I thought it was fresh. And then I just threw that Nas sample in there just to see if it would work because I liked Nas' voice. I gave it to Jay and it fit right into the scheme of his album and what he was talking about.

"Jay had something in his head, [other songs] we didn't use them. We probably did like 20 songs that nobody ever heard and I don’t even have the tapes of. I wish I had the tapes for that. A lot of the songs that he did that never was released was incredible. I just threw them away, probably a couple of months after [we finished Reasonable Doubt].

I thought we was never going to have any need for these songs, ever. I wasn’t thinking about masters, I wasn’t thinking he was gonna be a legend or nothing like that. I just said, 'Whatever, let's get rid of this.' It was Reasonable Doubt-styled shit. We had this one song called 'Hurt,' 'Blow Up,' songs that was incredible. But we just never used them.

"He did 20 songs with me and he did like 20 songs with Clark Kent that nobody ever heard. Clark might have those songs but I know I ain't got mine. I think there might be a couple of things floating on Youtube that my DJ, DJ Cubby Chub, took from a tape I gave him that he put on Youtube. But the majority of it is gone. I'm pretty sure I gave Jay the tapes. Jay gotta have it...if he didn't throw the cassettes away."

Ski: "That was my song! It was a song I was working on for my album at the time. It was me and Suede from Camp Lo rapping on it. I was happy about the song so I ran up in Dame’s house and Jay was there. I played it for them and they got the mad frown face, bopping they head, like, 'This is dope!'

Then Jay was like, 'You know you gotta give me that song right?' I was like, 'What do you mean? I just did this song!' He was like, 'Come on B, I need that for my album. You know we’re working on this album. Give me that beat, I want that hook too.' He took the beat, the hook, and the flow too! Which was cool, it wasn’t like he didn't ask me for it. He didn’t jack it. He told me he was going to do it.

"The thing with Mecca [was] she sung the hook. She got paid for singing, obviously. But I wrote the hook for the song. I guess the people that she was dealing with got in her ear and made her think she wrote the song and that she deserved all the publishing and that burned the bridge for what we was doing. They definitely wanted to work with her but it never got that far."

Ski: "That was a freestyle that he used to do a capella. He used to kick it every time we did a show. That's how that verse became famous, he spit that verse at a Maria Davis event called Mad Wednesdays and the whole city was like, 'Yo did you hear that rhyme Jay did at Maria Davis?' The buzz was crazy. After that he just used that vibe of Maria Davis being there. [The skit towards the end] didn’t really happen. That was just us being funny.

"So I just had this random beat laying around and he was like, 'Yo I want to rap to that beat.' I was like, 'You sure?' He did it and it sounded dope so it was cool to me. That wasn’t my favorite thing that I did for him. But it worked out. It was something that was totally different from how the rest of the album was flowing.

It definitely displayed some ill lyrical shit on his behalf. I wish I had did another track other than that because the beat was just another beat I had laying around and he just wanted to rap to it. That was one of those situations where we really had to get the album done so we just used that."

Ski: "Jay couldn't come up with a hook. That's why he took the sample from the guy from Sleepers and threw it in there. He was like, 'This is dope but I don’t know what kind of hook to add to it.' That movie was good but it was Jay’s idea to use it. He's definitely a movie buff, anything that had that energy of what he was representing.

"I never even noticed [it was edited on the album version.] Not at all. When I do songs, I don’t go back and listen to them. I just do them, and I keep doing them. That's one weird thing about me. I don't even have time for these songs. I had Reasonable Doubt in my car one time, for a month or two. But you know, I don’t want to hear it. I did it, I heard this a zillion times. I heard it more than anybody on Earth.

Think about it, when I’m making a beat, I’m looping this beat over and over for hours all day. Just working on this beat making it right. And then he lays a verse. And once it done, for two weeks straight I’ll play it to death. Then I can’t hear it no more. I’m pretty sure other producers got catalogs of their records and plaques and everything just to remember it. I’m more like, 'Okay, we did it. Let’s go to the next one.' I’m like painting pictures, I need a blank canvas all the time."

Ski: "I met [Geechi] Suede from Camp Lo [when] I was living in the Bronx on Valentine Avenue and Suede was also living there. That was probably 1992-1993. When I was in the group Original Flavor, he used to come around all the time and he wanted to make music. So I started doing songs for him.

I took him to Clark Kent's house one day and we was doing songs. Back then, it was just Suede. But we lost touch with each other. Then maybe a year later he came back and he had Sonny Cheeba with him and they said they had a group. I heard them rhyme and I was like, 'Yo, it’s kinda dope.' They didn’t have any music but they had that flow, that sound, that kick. We just put it together and that’s how we came up with most of that Uptown Saturday Night stuff.

"[The album] was basically done but we needed one more song to make a single and bring the album together. So it was crunch time. And I got that Dynasty sample ["Adventures in the Land of Music"] and I said, 'This is it, this is the one for them.' I wrote the hook in my house.

I played it over the phone for Suede, and he said, 'Yo, I gotta come hear that in person.' He came by the house with Cheeba, they wrote it that night, laid it down, and took it to Profile. They loved it and they had us in the studio. Next thing you know, it was all over the place.

"The thing for everybody I was working with...Biggie heard 'Luchini' and he was like, 'Come on, man, I need a beat from you.' Once Jay heard it, he was like, 'Come on, man, what the fuck?' [But when] Camp Lo heard 'Who You Wit,' they was like, 'Damn!' Matter of fact, I did a song for Nature called 'Ultimate High' and Jay was like, 'Yo, you know that was my beat. You know you should have gave me that beat.' And to this day he still wants to rap to that beat. Jay loves that track. We was about to redo the beat, but we never got to do it."

Ski: "I had started a record label called Roc-A-Blok, that was like ’95-’96. I had an artist named Richie Thumbs signed to our label at the time, and he was from Yonkers. So he told us about the group, 'Yo, there's this group called Sporty Thievz from Yonkers—they're pretty good, you should sign them.'

They came by the studio and I heard them rhyme, and as soon as I heard them I was like, 'These kids is kinda ill.' And they made they own beats. So we started working and making jams. And eventually we signed them to Roc-A-Blok.

"We made the 'Cheapskate' record which Sony put out with the video, and all that which did okay. But then they took it upon themselves to create the 'No Pigeons' record. They just took the instrumental to that record and rapped over it and it just took off. Everybody knew they was good, but they didn’t have a record at the time that was considered a commercial hit. They proved they was lyrically creative and they could also get on the radio. It was ill because that’s what they're known for, those kind of records. The timing was perfect."

Ski: "The last song I did with Jay was 'People Talking.' A lot of people think Kanye or Just Blaze did it, but I did it. I made that beat for an artist that I was working with in North Carolina named Mr. Dolo. He put out a mixtape called Carolina Blue Vol. 1.

"He was on that beat and he was killing it. But Jay was in town doing a show in Charlotte, and he said, 'Yo, you got any beats man? I'm in town. Come and see me.' I just had the instrumental version of that—and after he heard it, the next week he was flying me to New York to lay it down.

"That was classic but it never really saw the light of day because it was a hidden track on the Unplugged album. It's funny, I speak to Dame about it a lot and he be like, 'That was my favorite song that Jay ever did and I was mad he didn't want to shoot a video.' They wanted to shoot a video and do everything for that, but for some reason Jay didn’t want to do it. I have no idea why."

Ski: "That's one of the samples Dame wanted me to use because of the group the Black Keys. He did a project with them called Blackroc. He was like, 'Why don't you sample some Black Keys?' I was listening to they album and it was crazy, so I took the Black Keys sample. The name of that song was called 'Prowler' so I just called it 'Prowler 2.'

It was originally Jean Grae, Jay Electronica, and Mos Def on it. I just had a vision, like, "I would love to hear Joell Ortiz on this." Luckily, on Twitter, I said I was trying to get him on the song, and his manager hit me; he came through and made that verse.

I played it for Mos, and Mos was like, 'I don’t want to use him on the verse.' Mos wanted to use his homeboy Whosane on it. We didn’t use Whosane at all. So towards the end of the album, Mos Def ended up not working with us on the project. So I just said, 'I'm going to put Joell back on it.' And Joell killed it. He beasted. Mos' verse is in the vaults.

"[Our studio], people call it DD172, but we nicknamed it The Dojo. We recorded it and mixed everything here. It’s not a real studio either. We just got a room, a mic, and two speakers with my equipment set up with an engineer. We didn't have any money to do none of this stuff, we just did it. People just came in to show love. Nobody came by to record.

Jay Electronica came by and Dame was like, 'Yo you need to go downstairs, Ski is working on some stuff.' Jay came in, heard the beat, started writing, and just laid it down. Everybody who comes to The Dojo don't come to record, they just come and if they hear something cracking and they want to get on it, they'll rock it. There's no plan to our whole creative process.

Everything on the album was just moments in time. The whole song with Jim Jones and Curren$y wasn’t planned out, they was just both there and I played a beat. Next thing you know, they was smoking weed together and did a song."

Ski: "I did like five songs with Big L (R.I.P.). Big L was actually about to sign with Roc-A-Fella and be down with us before...you know what happened to him. He was coming through to my house and we had a good vibe so we would make hot records. That was right after Reasonable Doubt.

"He would bring Ma$e, Cam, Bloodshed (R.I.P.) by the house. I did songs with all of them even before they was out. But people never, ever heard that. It was the same thing that happened with Jay—I was like, 'We’re not gonna use these,' and I just got rid of them.

"That tape was dope, but only Big L had a copy and I never kept the tape. I don’t even know the names of the songs we did but we did some hot songs. I never knew it was going to be anything. Big L definitely had a tape but none of the songs I ever did with him ever came out.

"Mad cats ask me, 'Yo you sure you can’t dig them up?' I'm like, 'They’re gone!' Same for Outsidaz, Rah Digga, even Camp Lo. We would do like 20 songs, keep 10. Camp Lo, we did a whole album worth of stuff nobody will ever hear. I gave them tapes, but I know they don't have it."