Skyzoo has announced that his new album, A Dream Deferred, will be released this fall via his own imprint The Faculty and Duck Down Music. That’s great news for Skyzoo fans all over. What’s more good news is that Skyzoo also shared the album’s first single, “Jansport Strings”, produced by 9th Wonder. The song is driven by Skyzoo’s vivid and lyrical story-telling of growing up in BK and seeing Chi-Ali for the first time. He explains the meaning:
“The idea behind Jansport Strings is not based on it being literal, but more so in the figurative sense. As a kid in NY, the strings on your Jansport bag were a sign of power and presence. Kids would steal the strings off of each other’s bags and burn the tips to prevent getting robbed of them once they got them. The song is a 3 minute auto-bio of me as a kid in Brooklyn and seeing more than my friends and I had bargained for. In essence, my Jansport strings tied it all together, seeing what we all saw and what it made us. The ending is a clip from Video Music Box, the legendary NYC video show run by DJ Ralph McDaniels. This episode in particular was the debut of Chi-Ali’s ‘Age Ain’t Nothin But A Number’. Seeing that video that day on this episode of VMB made me start rhyming. This clip was literally the moment that changed my life.”
One time for Chi-Ali.