For those who want real. These are the records ski produce for reasonable doubt
Politics as usual
Ski: "We was working on
Reasonable Doubt at the time. Anything I made hot, Jay was trying to have dibs on it. We [was working] every day. I was making the beat, calling him, and he was coming to the crib. I was living in Brooklyn. He was literally right around the corner from me. We lived right there by Junior's.
"The system we had, we would make music first, he would reference it in my house. Back then we was paying for studio time and we didn’t want to pay for studio time and just sit in the studio. We would do pre-production at the crib, he would go home and get the lyrics memorized even more, and then go to the studio and re-lay it. He would just get in his own place, stare into space, and next thing you know, an hour later he got a song. He just wrote them and went in the booth, it took him two or three takes at most and it was done."
"I had done 'Politics As Usual' for Jay-Z, but Camp Lo wanted the beat because of the horns. And they was like, 'Yo how you gonna give that beat to Jay-Z? What about us? You always giving Jay the dope beats!'"
Jay-Z "Dead Presidents" (1996)
Ski: "I was at this DJ event, like one of those 'How Can I Be Down?' events in Florida. Nas'
Illmatic had just come out. And I was just listening to 'The World Is Yours.' I just fell in love with the pianos. Once I felt that vibe, I just went searching for anything with a piano that made me feel like that. Soon as I heard the piano, I was gonna fall in love.
I was just digging and digging, and I found that Lonnie Liston Smith joint ['A Garden of Peace'] and I thought it was fresh. And then I just threw that Nas sample in there just to see if it would work because I liked Nas' voice. I gave it to Jay and it fit right into the scheme of his album and what he was talking about.
"Jay had something in his head, [other songs] we didn't use them. We probably did like 20 songs that nobody ever heard and I don’t even have the tapes of. I wish I had the tapes for that. A lot of the songs that he did that never was released was incredible. I just threw them away, probably a couple of months after [we finished
Reasonable Doubt].
I thought we was
never going to have
anyneed for these songs,
ever. I wasn’t thinking about masters, I wasn’t thinking he was gonna be a legend or nothing like that. I just said, 'Whatever, let's get rid of this.' It was
Reasonable Doubt-styled shyt. We had this one song called 'Hurt,' 'Blow Up,' songs that was incredible. But we just never used them.
"He did 20 songs with me and he did like 20 songs with Clark Kent that nobody ever heard. Clark might have those songs but I know I ain't got mine. I think there might be a couple of things floating on Youtube that my DJ, DJ Cubby Chub, took from a tape I gave him that he put on Youtube. But the majority of it is gone. I'm pretty sure I gave Jay the tapes. Jay gotta have it...if he didn't throw the cassettes away."
Jay-Z f/ Mecca "Feelin' It" (1996)
Ski: "That was my song! It was a song I was working on for my album at the time. It was me and Suede from Camp Lo rapping on it. I was happy about the song so I ran up in Dame’s house and Jay was there. I played it for them and they got the mad frown face, bopping they head, like, 'This is dope!'
Then Jay was like, 'You know you gotta give me that song right?' I was like, 'What do you mean? I just did this song!' He was like, 'Come on B, I need that for my album. You know we’re working on this album. Give me that beat, I want that hook too.' He took the beat, the hook, and the flow too! Which was cool, it wasn’t like he didn't ask me for it. He didn’t jack it. He told me he was going to do it.
"The thing with Mecca [was] she sung the hook. She got paid for singing, obviously. But I wrote the hook for the song. I guess the people that she was dealing with got in her ear and made her think she wrote the song and that she deserved all the publishing and that burned the bridge for what we was doing. They definitely wanted to work with her but it never got that far."
Jay-Z "22 Two's" (1996)
Ski: "That was a freestyle that he used to do a capella. He used to kick it every time we did a show. That's how that verse became famous, he spit that verse at a Maria Davis event called Mad Wednesdays and the whole city was like, 'Yo did you hear that rhyme Jay did at Maria Davis?' The buzz was crazy. After that he just used that vibe of Maria Davis being there. [The skit towards the end] didn’t really happen. That was just us being funny.
"So I just had this random beat laying around and he was like, 'Yo I want to rap to that beat.' I was like, 'You sure?' He did it and it sounded dope so it was cool to me. That wasn’t my favorite thing that I did for him. But it worked out. It was something that was totally different from how the rest of the album was flowing.
It definitely displayed some ill lyrical shyt on his behalf. I wish I had did another track other than that because the beat was just another beat I had laying around and he just wanted to rap to it. That was one of those situations where we really had to get the album done so we just used that."