Ski Mask the Slump God

Known for his rapid-fire flows and penchant for covering topics both whimsical and sobering, often within the same song, Ski Mask the Slump God is skilfully unpredictable—and it works to his advantage. Born Stokeley Clevon Goulbourne in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, in 1996, the MC was raised in a household where hip-hop thrived; his father, who rapped under the name Sin City, encouraged Ski Mask to pen rhymes of his own. In addition to being influenced by family, Ski Mask is a stylistic descendant of the artists he grew up listening to—chiefly, the ever-animated and idiosyncratic Missy Elliott and Busta Rhymes. While he was surrounded by music from an early age, it wasn’t until he met the late XXXTENTACION in a juvenile detention centre in 2013 that Ski Mask began to take rapping seriously. The two joined forces and became frontrunners in the aggressive punk rap subculture of the booming SoundCloud hip-hop scene in the mid-2010s. That era culminated in the release of Ski Mask’s breakthrough mixtape, 2017’s You Will Regret, whose 2018 re-release featured “Catch Me Outside”, his Gen-Z flip of the 1999 Timbaland-produced Missy Elliott single “She’s a Bitch”. In 2018, Ski Mask would drop his debut album, the explorative STOKELEY: on the opening track, “So High”, Ski Mask croons delicately about a boundless love, while the very next song, the high-octane Juice WRLD collaboration “Nuketown”, sees Ski Mask returning to his edgy roots. Throughout his artistic progression, Ski Mask continues to showcase his versatility, paying homage to the artists who came before him and paying respects to the friends he’s lost along the way.