Music has changed frequently over the past 20 years, going from being New York dominated with aggressive flows and heavy in your face lyricism coupled with hard hitting beats shifting to a more southern, commercialized, “crunk” style that more people would gravitate to with slower tempos that everyone could dance to. As of right now Atlanta has capitalized on the more melodic flows that sound good to the ear and fast paced-trap based triplet styles of lyrics. Although most of it is entertaining a lot of it was watered down and lacks originality as many artists on all tiers sound much too similar. On the complete opposite side of the lyrical spectrum, lies what I like to call the “overly woke” type of rap where artists rap about current social and political issues that we face as a whole in current society. And while we do need it every now and then I feel as if it’s gotten to a point where I don’t want to hear it for a while because it’s essentially talking about the same thing every time. The common middle ground that I was looking for was a combination of head bobbing flows and deliveries accompanied by lyricism without a deeper meaning. With impeccable timing, in comes a south Florida rapper by the name of Stokeley Goulbourne, other wise known as Ski Mask The Slump God.
The mainstream rap game needed a breath of fresh air and boy did it get one. With tracks like “SLDM Remix”, “Where’s The Blow”, “Babywipe”, and his most noteworthy track, “Catch Me Outside”, it’s easy to see how we’ve been blessed with such a unique talent and yet not many people realize it. However, his first mainstream breach was being linked to XXXTENTACION. Rappers as of recently have also been coming up as duos although not set by contract but more so as just collaborating with one another in and out of the studio. In doing so, one of them usually tend to get overshadowed by the other because of their popularity.
Even though he couldn’t escape that due to Ski Mask’s partner’s domestic violence charges & breakout song “Look At Me,” Ski Mask has not only stepped out of his partner’s shadow, but has also seemed to cast a shadow of his own as he continues to drop banger after banger, rack up millions of youtube views, and prove that he’s at the head of his class as a new school wordsmith. His most recent accomplishment was earning a spot on one of the BET Awards highly acclaimed cypher’s; and simply killed it I might add. There’s not much else I can say except keep going Stoke; keep your mind clear; and keep blazing a trail for yourself, because we need you.