Skyzoo Music For My Friends LP Cover
Brooklyn MC Skyzoo has confirmed the upcoming release of Music For My Friends, a sprawling new LP that will feature collaborations with Black Thought, Bilal, Jadakiss and more. The album is primed for a June 23rd release and will be just the right amount of warm-up for Skyzoo's album release set at Blue Note Jazz Club, four days later. His greatest accomplishment in career that has spanned over a decade thus far, Music For My Friends is Sky's hip-hop message of camaraderie: solidarity over solitude. A community in commotion.
The Blue Note performance (presented in part by Okayplayer) will take place June 27th at 12:30 a.m. just after piano virtuoso Robert Glasper finishes his own set, and will feature Skyzoo and a full band performing the new album from front to back. Tickets are $10 and guaranteed to sell out fast, so don't delay and pick up yours right here. Skyzoo has also given Okayplayer a verbal preview of Music For My Friends, which highlights the MC's infectious wordplay. Read it in full below, along with a full tracklist and more info.
"For us growing up, the motto was 'All Day, Always.' Whatever we stood for or stood on, that was the theme. Wanting and believing in the things we saw early on intrigued us more than they should have at that age. Imagine being 13, 14 years old, falling in love with things like Suicide Doors, not knowing the depths of to which they became, but learning such on the fly, those became The Moments That Matter. It pushed us to zero in on Luxury, in an abundance at that, with only the road as to which we acquire it separating our attempts, but out intents were all parallel.Being overly observant prematurely taught us that Everything's For Sale, and depending on how we interpreted that, some of us would go to sleep at night and See A Key, or a Ki', depending on how you slept. However those eight hours would translate, it only drove home what we overheard right in front of us; Money Makes Us Happy, 'It's as simple as that' we would hear on repeat. So the adoration of those Playing Favorites only enhanced what we wanted and why we wanted so much, so fast. You get the right look on the right day with the right on lookers looking on and you can open up a Meadow Of Trust. A crowd full of Women Who Can Cook, hopefully designed like the women who groomed us at home, but realistically resembling the ones who may have never spoken to us had we not got ahold of what we set out to get. So it's worth it, right? Maturing to learn that nothing beats Civilized Leisure, and all the time it took to figure that out? Simply chalk it up to The Experience, one that should never leave us no matter how far we may eventually be removed from it. Times when those closest to you are forced to grow up fast, and you're forced to grow up faster with them, it eerily mirrors something you see on TV, like Asking Bodie For A Package, how the order comes from home and your day ones are thrown into the fire, and you stand tall with them thinking 'nah, it can't just burn forever.'
So you sweat it out with them. You relate and understand and join in but feel like you have a guilty, unfair upper hand, because even though it's never been easy for you, you can still attempt to sleep somewhat decently, saying to yourself 'my pops ain't never leave and my moms did every scene'. A blueprint and some 'know how, some good cooked food and some awareness leads to you thinking these conflicting, guilt inspired feelings are the Things I Should've Told My Friends. When it's all said and done, when the faces change and the desires become more expensive and the next in line become the next in line, when the bloodied badge unjustly wins and the lights begin to flicker and then dim, you realize maybe it was all just a Sweet Pursuit. All of it, nothing more, nothing less. And the sounds it leaves in the memories it created slowly becomes Music For My Friends." -Skyler (13 year old lyricist, graffiti writer, playground point guard, quarter water aficionado, and Mortal Kombat champ, preferably the Sega Genesis version)
