19-year-old Pennsylvania rapper Lil Skies started 2018 with a bang when his Life of a Dark Rose project cracked the top 10 of the Billboard 200 albums chart in January.
His "Red Roses" and "Nowadays" singles featuring Landon Cube are racking up tens of millions of plays, making him one of the biggest breakout stars of the new year. Up until this point, Skies has kept big-name collaborations to a minimum, but he told Billboard this week that he has multiple songs with Gucci Mane on the way.
"Gucci is the big bro," he said. "I got music with him coming, dropping soon."
Lil Skies shared a snippet of a song with Gucci in late January, and he says there's another collaboration in the works for Gucci's upcoming album.
"He fucks with that shit, and he likes my work process," Skies said of their burgeoning relationship. "I’m not gonna get a Gucci track and sit on it for a couple days, I’ma go right to the studio and record that shit. He called me after my show and I sent him a song—he got on it, and he sent me one for his album."
Skies is currently signed to All We Got Entertainment through Atlantic Records, but he says Gucci has still approached him about deals. Skies would rather be his own Gucci, though.
"He pretty much keeps telling me I got it," Skies noted. "He’s fucking with me mad hard. [He's] tryna holla at me about deals and shit like that. At the same time, I’ll talk to him and be like, “No disrespect to you, but I’m tryna be my own boss... I’m tryna establish my own brand and be my own Gucci.”
Skies also talked about his signature face tattoos and explained that he'll never regret them.
"Hell no," he said. "I’m probably not getting no more now, ‘cause I done took up like hella space, but I stay getting new tats, man. That shit’s like music. It’s just something that grows with me. I just be going with the flow. I know for sure that when I get a new tat, it’s for life. I don’t got no regrets with any of my tats. I got tattoos that are really old looking, old feeling, but at the same time, I like it. It’s art to me."
Discussing his most meaningful tattoos, he said, "I got these two on my wrist for my pops. It says April 28th, 2010. That’s the day my dad almost died and shit." His father, who is also a rapper, nearly died during an explosion at his construction job. Skies says his father has always been very supportive of his career path. "He was like, 'If you wanna do this shit, you gonna do it.' That’s what he always said to me. I take that advice with everything in life. I was like, 'Damn, I wanna go crazy with the tats. I'ma do it.' So I did it."
For more on Skies' thoughts about old heads, drugs, and "Red Roses," watch his episode of Trending Topics with Pigeons & Planes below.
