For an artist who counts The Neptunes, Timbaland, Missy and the Clipse as his tightest mates, Skillz, (formerly known as Mad Skillz) has laid relatively low. The rapper – whose spot on underground anthem B-Boy Document 99 will be forgotten by few – is ready however, to set this summer ablaze with a smoking performance at the third annual Brooklyn Hip Hop Festival and the release of the highly anticipated LP, ‘Million Dollar Backpack’.

Hailing from Richmond, Virginia, Skillz has become known for being one of the highest-paid ghost writers in the hip hop industry and further for his hilarious year-end Rap Up tunes where he exercises lyrical genius to summarise the noteworthy events of the past 12 months.

Skillz tells The Situation what he’s looking forward to about this summer and why his backpack is worth a million dollars.

We haven’t heard from you in a minute, what are you up to these days?

Just trying to finish up this album, Million Dollar Backpack, finishing up the final touches, you know – eleventh hour stuff, trying to wrap the last guest appearances and clearances. Hopefully we will be able to get it out late summer, early fall.

What can we expect from this album, and why call it ‘Million Dollar Backpack’?

You can expect a really good hip hop album.  In a nutshell, that’s the best way I can explain it. I actually wanted to name it that – I came up with this big marketing blitz: ‘When was the last time you heard a really good hip hop album?’ But after tossing ideas around with people and discussing the music I make which they always call ‘backpack music,’ we came up with Million Dollar Backpack.

 Hip hop has been good to me and I’ve been in it for ten years and everything that I have and everything that I’ve acquired, all of my dreams came out of my backpack. So it’s kind of a play on ‘you can’t judge a book by its cover’. Just ‘cause I have a backpack on, doesn’t mean you know what’s in it.

You’re releasing it on your label Big Kidz Entertainment, can you tell us a little bit about how that got started?

It’s called Big Kidz Entertainment and it came about a couple of years ago when I did some projects and I started to get a little money.  One of my friends was like, ‘Damn, you act like a big-ass kid’ and I was like ‘Well don’t we all at some point?’ So it just happened that’s why we called it Big Kidz Entertainment, ‘cause I think we all have a little bit of kid in us. 

Do you have any other artists on the label?

No, actually I’m not even going to focus on dealing with anybody else until I can put my stuff out there and get it taken care of. I don’t really want to play with anyone else’s dreams.

You’re also on The Roots’ label Okayplayer – how did that come about?

 I’ve been a fan of The Roots from, oh god, way back – when they were still The Square Roots. Every time they were in Virginia I was at the shows, I was in the front row, I knew all the words. Then, when I put out material I was still coming to shows, but they never knew I was the Mad Skillz, that was putting out the records. Me and (The Roots front man) Black Thought have a mutual love for MCing and entertaining. ?uestlove and I share a love of sneakers and record collecting – so we have a lot in common.  They’re good friends of mine, and I’m honoured to be a part of that family. 

So you’re performing this summer at the Brooklyn Hip Hop Festival, what can we expect from your performance? And what are you looking forward to about it?

Just a good time – I’m bringing in new elements to my show – I’ve graduated from just me and a DJ. I don’t do that anymore, I’ve got a drummer and a keyboard player – there are a lot of different elements to the show that I didn’t have before because a lot of the music that I’ve recorded on this last album has been live instrumentation so I can’t really just go out with an instant replay and hit a button anymore. And it gives you a lot more freedom. But they didn’t have to pull my leg to do it. I mean New York? Brooklyn in the summertime? Families and sh*t? Good people, good music and good vibes. This is my first time playing the festival so I’m really excited. I really want to see (hip hop trio) Tanya Morgan and I really want to see Ghostface. I haven’t seen Ghost since he put out Fishscale and More Fish and I’ve never seen Tanya Morgan.

Are there any other hip hop festivals you support?

Actually this is my first one.  I’ve done so many shows in a two-year period that I’ve had this deal with Koch Entertainment for a while, but haven’t got started on the record ‘cause I’ve been touring so much. I’ve done a lot of shows with DJ Jazzy Jeff we’ve been all over the world including dance festivals in Ibiza and Winter Music Conference.

You’ve made quite a name for yourself on the underground with your year-end Rap Up songs, how long does it take you to come up with them? And who produces the tracks?

It depends, it could be an hour or it could take a month. I don’t even start thinking about what kinds of things have to go in the Rap Up until the second week of November after Halloween. I don’t really put a lot of time into it, it just comes – it’s the ultimate barbershop record. A lot of times I take other people’s beats and a couple of times I’ve done original tracks. But if there’s something hot that comes out that year – I’ll use that beat.

You comment on a lot of big names in the industry, has it gotten you into any trouble?

Not yet, I’ve definitely got a little cocky with them too because nobody’s ever said anything to me about them. So like now it’s pretty much no holds barred and I just say whatever.

You got started being a freestyle battle champion, so at this point do you prefer to work in the studio, or perform live on stage?

Both. I was definitely used to being in front of people but the studio came up at one point and so I’m definitely a studio rat, I’ve come to love the studio. It’s a beautiful place and so many things can happen in there, it’s unreal – but there’s also nothing like the stage. 

You’ve worked with and seem pretty tight with Timbaland, what are your thoughts on his beef with record producer Scott Storch?

It’s stupid.  I’m like – ‘Don’t you have something better to do?’ They’re funny – I mean I remember they were the best of friends. That you can go from that to this is kinda corny. I mean producers beefing? That’s corny.  Beefing in general now is corny, but producers doing it? It’s corny.

These days it just seems like beef is used as a marketing campaign…

It never helps though – it never gets anyone in the store to buy the album. 

You don’t think so? What about 50 Cent?

Oh hell no. Hell no. It may have helped with 50 in the early stages of his career, but come on – I expect 50 to talk about people now, he has to. It didn’t help him beefing with people – nah it’s corny. I’m making too much money to be upset at every-fucking-body. And I’m one to talk because I put out a song once a year talking about everybody. But what I say is true – it happened. I’m not making this shit up. If I’m saying Paris Hilton went to fucking jail, it’s because she did. It’s not like I made it up. The only thing you can get mad at me about is ‘Damn it’s December, I went to jail in June – did he have to bring that shit back up?’ That’s pretty much it. 

You’ve come to be known as hip hop’s foremost ‘ghost writer’ - how did you end up writing lyrics for major artists like Sean ‘P. Diddy’ Combs?

Yeah, Puff’s a cool dude, a very smart businessman. 

But I got into it by accident actually. I was in the studio and this DJ was telling me he was working with a cat who was trying to get some songs submitted and I gave him five with the DJ’s beats and the artist chose four of them. That was my first foray into it, I didn’t realise how lucrative it could be. It is big business but I can’t tell you who that was. I’ve been doing it since 1998 and lately I’ve been getting into doing a lot of RnB songs. There are so many different things I can say in an RnB song that I can never say in rap.  I’m a writer at heart – I just love to write period. It just so happens that I wrote raps better than anything else. I’ve been bitten by the film bug and I’ve been doing little scripts here and there.

I have a short film that’s derived from a song which I’m hoping to shoot this summer. It’s something real indie and so I spend a lot of my money now on film equipment and shit like that.   

On a final note, there’s been a lot of talk this year about hip hop being ‘dead’ - what direction do you think hip hop is going these days?

I think it sucks, I’m not mad at what radio plays I’m just a little perturbed at what they don’t play – there’s no balance. The industry is really ring tone-driven; nobody cares about making a great album, they only care about making a hot song. I never thought we’d get back to those days. But you can’t blame everything on hip hop either. I think they have a tendency right now to blame everything on us and everything ain’t our f*cking fault. So you know it’s sad but the state of the music isn’t sad it is over what 20-25 years old?

If you had a child and he was one, would you expect him to be the same when he’s 25? Hell no. And he’s going to go through some things in those 25 years that you might not like – he’s gonna try drugs, become sexually active – he has to go through those things himself – and I think that’s what hip hop is doing. I don’t think it’s dead, it’s just f*cked up.

Check out Skillz at Brooklyn’s 3rd annual Hip Hop Festival on June 23rd – see http://brooklynbodega.com for more information. Expect 'Million Dollar Backpack' out towards the end of the summer – check www.myspace.com/skillz for videos, singles and fun and http://www.okayplayer.com/skillz for announcements on the official release date.