Enter the 11th Dimension With Ski Mask the Slump God

Summer 2017, South Florida. Hip-hop fans will tell you, "You just had to be there."

Rap music had just reached a new peak thanks to artists like XXXTentacion, Denzel Curry, and Kodak Black, who were blowing up thanks to SoundCloud, a streaming service that allows anyone to upload to the platform. The service helped launch hits like "Look at Me!" the South Florida anthem "No Flockin'," and the mosh pit classic "Take a Step Back." The last one was written and performed by Broward County rapper Ski Mask the Slump God and his best friend, XXXTentacion.

"It was a legendary time. I always look back at it like it was a really great time for me," Ski tells New Times. "Everybody was still here. X was still here; Juice was still here — so It was a really good time. It's always cool being a part of that era of rap."

When New Times catches up with him over the phone, he's busy on tour, resting the day before his concert in Salt Lake City.

A prominent figure of the SoundCloud rap era, Ski Mask went on a bit of a hiatus, not dropping an album for six years — a streak that he broke in June with the release of his album, 11th Dimension.

"There's nothing like the 2016-2017 music era," he shares. "It was really a crazy-ass time to be making music, especially with SoundCloud and everything that was going on, and just how many artists was popping out. Like new artists was popping out of the blue. It still happens now, but I don't know; music was just really different back in the day."

Despite the deaths of his friends and collaborators XXXTentacion and Juice Wrld, Ski Mask still looks back at the time with love and nostalgia.

"It was just a whole different time. Fuck. It was a crazy time to be a part of music," he adds. "Everybody was just so involved in the underground. Like the underground was not the underground back then because everybody was interested in what was going on in the scene, while everybody else hated everything that was on like radio and in the mainstream music scene."

Along with X, Ski became a big player in the rap scene at the time, as the pair helped create underground bangers such as "Off the Wall!" "RIP Roach," and "H2O." He credits X for helping him expand his mind creatively and introducing him to bands such as the Dead Kennedy and Portugal the Man.

One of Ski's earliest hits was "Psycho," a track that sampled Slipknot's "Psychosocial," something unheard of then. He helped bridge the gap between hip-hop and metal in a way that hadn't been seen before.

SoundCloud rappers were also dropping bars referencing movies like Star Wars and anime like Dragon Ball. "I'm really big on anime; so was X," he adds. "He was bigger on anime than me back in the day, but now I'm a huge weeb. I used to watch a lot of Naruto and Dragon Ball Z."

Those little details let listeners know that the SoundCloud rappers weren't trying to adopt a gangster persona or appeal to middle America. Instead, they focused their energy on an audience who understood hood culture as much as they did pop culture.
Ski spent most of 2018 mourning X's death. The two played a huge role in South Florida's burgeoning underground rap scene, and with X gone, a shift began.

Still, X's death didn't stop Ski from releasing his debut album in November of that year. Aptly titled Stokely, Ski's real name, the album performed well, serving up hits like "Faucet Failure," "Foot Fungus," and the Juice Wrld-assisted "Nuketown," another mosh pit favorite.

"The song was already made before I showed Juice the song," he remembers. "I was asking him to get on a different song, actually, and he heard 'Nuketown,' and he would not let me not let him get on the song. I was trying to do it by myself. I was trying to make it a single, and he would not let that happen. So I was just like, 'All right, yeah. I'll just let you get on it.'"

Juice's contribution to the track was the anthemic, cutthroat chorus that helped it become a hit at a time when "rage" music was beginning to take off.

"Every show would be like a mosh pit rage show," Ski says. "It's funny a lot of people back then wasn't doing that back then. They were just having regular shows; I don't even think Travis Scott was really having rage shows back then. It turned into a thing. Whenever we came into the game, it was just about making everybody jump in the shows. I remember people used to be like, 'Oh, that's not what a show is.'"

In 2019, the pair embarked on a tour while working on the collaborative album Evil Twins. However, since Juice's death in December of the same year, there's been little news on the fate of the project, with fans hoping it still sees the light of day.

"I definitely want to try to get that out for you guys, so I'm gonna talk to Grade A. I just got put into a group chat with them, too, recently. They just called me yesterday. I'm gonna talk to Grade A founder Lil Bibby and talk to everybody on Juice's team and see if his mom would like for me to get that out to you guys."

In the meantime, fans have 11th Dimension to sink their teeth into. The album feels like a return to form for the rapper, although it has crisp production work from Haze, Oogiee Mane, and ATL Jacob.

"11th Dimension really just came from how many songs I had on there and how many different genres I was doing 'cause I had singing songs on there that were totally different from the rapping songs on there and then everything else," Ski explains. "I felt like every song would just bring you to a different dimension, like a different vibe from each song. It wasn't like one of those cohesive-type albums. So I just wanted to come up with a name that could perfectly explain that."
Ski Mask is currently on tour in support of the album, and social media hype is building for the show's electrifying and uplifting feel.

"On the tour that we've been doing, we've been playing 'Headrush' and 'Shibuya,' and those two songs go like the stupidest for sure. Definitely gotta continue to play some more new shit on there," he asserts. "Imma try to test out playing some more newer shit, but we've been playing a lot of the old shit, like 'Life's Short' and 'Off the Wall.'"

Ski is focusing on dropping more music this year — not only to keep up the momentum but because he knows that fans want that.

"I want to get back into the studio while I'm on tour and just record some newer shit so that I could preview it on tour or just preview it on my social media because I want to get these songs done with some underground artists and shit, like Lazer Dim 700 and 41. I want to try new shit, either a new voice or just a new way of doing music or just a new type of beat that I don't usually do or more underground-type beats. So I'm going to just try something new in general for this next phase."

Ski is also determined to make his homecoming show at the Fillmore Miami Beach on Wednesday, August 28, one of the tour's most memorable. He teases New Times about bringing out BLP Kosher or Kodak Black.

"I barely do shows in Florida other than Rolling Loud. I'm probably gonna start doing more," he acknowledges. "I'm gonna do a Miami and a Fort Lauderdale show probably after this tour, though, but I'll say I'll definitely set that up."

Ski Mask the Slump God. 8 p.m. Wednesday, August 28, at the Fillmore Miami Beach, 1700 Washington Ave., Miami Beach; 305-673-7300; fillmoremb.com. Tickets cost $58.50 to $75.50 via livenation.com.