Ski Mask The Slump God Taught Me Humility
I know hip hop. And in 2018, I was sure I knew good hip hop. So when a friend suggested I listen to the new project from Ski Mask the Slump God, describing it as mumble rap that I would like, I was skeptical. But since we don’t have to spend $20 to hear an album anymore, what did I have to lose in trying it out? I was sure I’d play one song, then go back to listening to Joyner Lucas, like I’d been doing that week. The Ski Mask album in question was released on November 30th, 2018, and it’s called STOKELEY which is also his government name. It was his first studio album, dropped after a series of successful mixtapes, and the cover features a painting of Ski Mask dressed like a Revolutionary War general but still wearing his iconic sideways du-rag.
With one look at that cover, I was already shaking my head. And my expectations were set even lower by the title of the first track I played: “Foot Fungus”. A few seconds of simple intro and a Kenny Beats tag later, and I heard Ski Mask for the first time.
Uh, okay, baby be calling me Hercules
'Cause the H on my waist, but this bitch here stand for Hermes
O-o-okay, I done popped me a perky
'Cause I heard it help with the pain, but just help my backaches
Okay, uh, baby don't hurt me
Let's begin after three 'cause a nigga like foreplay
Uh, uh, uh, uh, okay
Dripping like I just took a shit and clogged toilet
By all measurements, I should have hated this. The rhymes are simple, the punch lines are average at best, and he’s talking about popping pills, sleeping with women, and flashy clothes. Classic mumble rap.
But… I fucking love it.
I’m Devin Dabney, and this is how Ski Mask the Slump God Taught Me Humility.
The phrase “old-head” is a pejorative term in hip hop for people who are either past their prime, existing in a scene beyond the appropriate age, or perhaps still hanging onto an outdated perception of the culture. They’re the people that either can’t get with the times, or flat out refuse to - sometimes both - usually because they see the past times as better.
I think, in some ways, I was doomed from birth to become an old-head. The adults in my life tended to like older music, so growing up I consistently listened to either 70’s soul, smooth jazz, country-western, or sometimes the most old-head music of all: classical. There was some hip hop, of course, but rarely newer than the mid-90’s. Actually, the reason I even started rapping way back in 2005 - aside from proving my peers wrong when they said I couldn’t rap - was because I was sick of how hip hop felt: monochromatic, incomplete, and a little heavy on the crack.
Surely, anyone could see this, right? Or so I thought.
Fast forward to 2018. I’m a routesetter at Planet Granite Portland, freshly transplanted from Indiana.
I’m wrapping up a day of setting when one of my fellow setters asks me:
“You listen to the new Ski Mask album yet?”
“Who?”
“Ski Mask the Slump God. He’s kinda like mumble rap, but I still feel like you would like it. He references a lot of cartoons and shit we watched when we were kids.”
The phrase “mumble rap” is a pejorative term that originally defined a sub-genre of hip hop featuring unclear, messy vocal delivery, but nowadays it’s become a bit of a catch-all term for music that is deemed talentless, meaningless, or strictly designed for popularity. Anyone who uses the term “mumble rap” is almost certainly… you guessed it! An old-head.
At first, I didn’t know what to think. I felt shocked, and honestly, kind of ashamed. I was ashamed that I loved this music, this… mumble rap. But also, the shame around my judgment of this music.
Why was I so certain that I shouldn’t like it, even after I clearly did?
I think I felt that I was betraying hip hop by liking this music - that if I really cared about hip hop, I wouldn’t support something that was so obviously not a “real” part of the culture. As I say that now, I can see that I was betraying hip hop by trying to dictate what it should be, based on what some dudes made 40 years ago. Hip hop culture, by definition, is counterculture… so if someone from outside the culture can dictate what it “should” be, then it’s no longer counterculture.
When you’re proud to be a part of something, it’s natural to wanna protect it. But it's that same sense of protection that can lead you down a path of moral superiority, close-mindedness, and binary thinking. Any good therapist will tell you that love is not a mindset of scarcity, but abundance. You don’t grip the love you have tightly and dole it out sparingly, you let it go and expand, knowing that more will come to you and you will always have more. I was not letting hip hop do that. I was white-knuckle gripping onto what inspired me - what I saw as moving and important - without remembering that: A) people aren’t all moved by the same things, and B) people once thought of MY inspirational artists as mumble rap.
There’s another twist in the Ski Mask story.
Turns out, young Stokeley Clevin Goulbourne and I might have a lot more in common than I thought.
His dad was a Fort Lauderdale rapper named Sin City, and he pushed his son toward hip hop but didn’t lead him to believe other music was lesser. In an interview the year before this album dropped, 21-year-old Ski Mask said, "I listen to every genre: rap, rock, classical, heavy metal... I listen to Adele sometimes, too.”
I’m a lyricist. I value complex storytelling, world-building, and big-picture concepts.
I value it because it’s who I am and who I wanna be.
I also fucking love Ski Mask the Slump God. I love his off-kilter cadence, his references to Spongebob and The Powerpuff Girls, and his intentionally irreverent musical style. Listening to this album - over and over - taught me a valuable lesson in perspective and humility.
I learned that yes, some hip hop is like bubblegum. And some hip hop is like steak. And of course if I bite into a cube of Hubba Bubba Max expecting the flavors of a ribeye, I’m gonna be disappointed.
But you can’t judge a piece of gum as a ribeye, and you can’t judge an album by its cover - no matter how ridiculous it is.
Woke up to a good life, baby
Getting chicken bitch, you know I'm gravy
Watching me, what you see? Diamonds HD
Shining brighter than the smile on my auntie
As it turns out, bubblegum tastes pretty damn good.
Thanks for listening to Hip Hop Taught Me Everything. This whole show - from imagery to writing to beats to the website to final mixes - is created by the two of us: Kris Hampton and Devin Dabney.
You can support the show by sharing it with all of your friends who love hip hop. Or podcasts. Even better, both.
We know that we aren’t the only ones out here who were raised by hip hop. If you’d like to tell us about a lesson you learned from your favorite song, to possibly be featured on a future episode, share it with us at My Story.
