Elijah Prudent
“I stressed the whole label out five times. I stressed my producers out, stressed my manager out,” Sk8star smiles ruefully. “I’m just crazy when it comes to this music, I care about it so much.”
The 21-year-old is calling me from Atlanta a few weeks ahead of the release of his hotly anticipated new mixtape Designer Junkie. Recorded and revised over the past two years, the project is a culmination of Sk8star’s circuitous path to minor Atlanta stardom.
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Raised in Macon, GA, Sk8star’s first song was a 2011 “freestyle” over “Peso” by A$AP Rocky (his older cousin Juan wrote the verse and taught him to rap). He started recording more seriously around 10th grade using Mixcraft with a $30 snowball mic. Though his music received little attention initially, Sk8 continued to iterate on his sound, heavily influenced by Rich Gang and Future.
He’s since managed to set himself apart from his peers thanks to his committed performances and an increasingly lush sonic palette courtesy of Atlanta mainstay Richie Souf (Future, Playboi Carti, I Love Makonnen), who’s become his core producer over the past year. And being affiliated with the ØWay crew certainly hasn’t hurt his rising star either.
Sk8star’s new album Designer Junkie has been in the making for two years and gone through five versions. Part of the process was finding and refining his sound, but the biggest leap is the project’s thematic cohesion, anchored by his easy chemistry with Souf. At first blush, Sk8star’s subject matter and Young Thug-derived songs might seem like standard fare. One person who would disagree with that assessment? Thug himself.
“I remember I was in LA in September at Young Thug's studio cause he was trying to sign me," Sk8star says. "I always played certain songs from the album and just watched his reaction. Like he loved ‘2Sexy,’ he think it reminds him of Keed."
Spend a little time with Designer Junkie and Sk8star's attention to detail becomes apparent. Whether deploying his typical Lil GotIt-indebted flow, a delirious melodic falsetto, a gruffer tone that recalls Thug’s “Cartier Gucci Scarf,” or all three on the same track, Sk8star’s varied cadences keep things feeling fresh throughout.
“I feel like I went from a boy to a man,” Sk8star says of Designer Junkie. “You can literally tell, ‘oh yeah, he's leveled up, he's got some money, he signed a deal.’”
The FADER caught up with Sk8star to talk about his start rapping, building a creative partnership with Richie Souf, and the craziest recording sessions for Designer Junkie.
The cover for Designer Junkie
On the album, you have a song titled “Black Sheep.” When you were growing up, what made you feel like a black sheep?
Growing up, I felt like a black sheep because like, nowadays, it's more the cooler thing to be different, but growing up and especially in the South, it never was the coolest thing to not look like how everybody else looked. So, I kind of always dealt with, not bullying or nothing like that, just more feeling alone growing up sometimes ‘cause of the things I was into.
Then with the music shit, it's cool to blow up now and get my notoriety, but my earlier years on SoundCloud, nobody really was trying to push for me. [...] I just vividly remember when people didn't want me to win, so like now that I'm breaking through the barriers and the doors and trying to get to that next level, it just reminded me that I was once a black sheep.
I still feel like a black sheep, so I try to keep that chip on my shoulder a lot. Especially throughout this album, I feel like I got something to prove every day.
What made you want to put out your first song?
One, I was broke, so I really wanted to change my life and I was seeing other kids my age on the internet, [and] they're going up, you know what I'm saying? I was like, “damn,” and I felt like I was better than them or just as good. So I'm like, yeah, I gotta try this shit.
I wanted to delete a lot of my old shit bro, but I didn’t because someone reminded me that it's some young black kid out there that probably doesn't have every resource and they wanna be where I am, so I left it up there to show them like you can come from this to this.
What made me start taking it serious, I made this song called “Stand 4 Sum.” I remember my main friend group, they was like, “yeah, he rapping,” but they wasn't like listening to that shit. But I remember when I made that song, all my friends were like, “damn, you sound good, you sound fye.”
And I got like 1000 plays on that shit. So when I got that 1000 plays, I was like, “oh yeah, I can do a million plays.”
How did you and Richie Souf meet and why do you guys work so well together?
I DM'ed him like 2024, and I just told him like, “I'm the hardest young n***a out, bro, you have to work with me.” And he just was like, “bet,” but he didn't send me no beats; [laughs] I'm like, “yeah, you should just left me on read, bro.”
But around January last year, he texted me, “I ain't gonna lie, you was right, you are the hardest, you're the truth.”
So he started sending me beats and shit, but Richie’s a real family-oriented guy. So he started calling me here and there just to check the temperature, and we'll talk, then we'll talk more, then we'll talk more. Richie just started calling me every single day, talking about regular shit.
So now we’re just like best friends for real, and it works so well because just that reason. I never had a producer who I talked to every day so much. I have a few now, but at first, I never had that relationship with a producer. If you're talking to him every day, I might just tell him little things about songs I like or sounds, not even realizing he's analyzing me, he's studying me over time.
The chemistry just got so crazy and at this point now, he just knows what I'm looking for in the beat and he's an OG so it's like I trust him -- he got plenty of hits. So a lot of times he'll throw me in a direction I didn't want to go in, but when I do the beat, I'm like, “damn, like I'm glad I did this.” So, I trust his vision a lot.
One thing I noticed on the title track and even “YEAAN” with Tezzus is that you’ve got some beats that feel like deliberate callbacks to older songs like “Headlines” by Drake or “Oooooh” by Future and Young Scooter. Especially in the nostalgia era we’re in, how are you and Richie thinking about homage?
Yeah, we're not on that -- we actually hate it. But we like real homage, showing love. But I don't want to carbon copy a lot of these things. So even with the “Headlines” shit [on “Designer Junkie”], that was Richie just loving that song and making us a beat that was in that realm. And I didn't even peep it until someone in the studio said “this shit reminds me of ‘Headlines,’” so it was a Richie thing.
But Richie always tells me that he wants me to be the person that they pay homage to 10 years from now, so we try to be very innovative, we try to be very original. Obviously I love my Future, so I definitely incorporate a lot in my music, but I try to keep it as original as possible.
There's nothing wrong with it either like, good homage is a thing. It's a such thing as good homage and bad homage in my eyes. I honestly try to stay away from it as much as I can though, cause I want to just be my own man, but there's nothing wrong with it. I just say, don't get too carried away in trying to relive the past bro, cause we're in the present for a reason. We're trying to build for the future, so it's not really like the biggest thing on my list. I think it's better to just be Sk8star for real.
You mentioned you wanted your song with UntilJapan on here but it didn’t work out. How did you guys connect?
We've been cool for years. When Japan was first starting to make music at 17 or so, I used to go get them and we used to go to the studio and shit together. So I've been knowing Japan for years. I'm in his first ever video, “Ounce.”
I love Japan. Every time we go away from each other for a while and work in our own areas, we come back together and just laugh and talk about how good everything going for us. I pulled up on him, like maybe November or December, and we just made that “Chemical Garden” song off the strength. He showed me his new album, what he's working on. He coming crazy, coming different.
So then we just made that shit, and we was supposed to make more shit cause I wanted a different vibe for my album. But we just didn’t link up in time, so I was like, “fuck I gotta turn the album in.” But we’re talking right now and we got some surprises on the way.
What was the craziest recording session for Designer Junkie?
The funniest session was the songs I have with Tezzus and diamond*, “NSD” and “YEAAN.” If you know Tezzus, Tezzus is very crazy and upbeat -- everywhere you go, he’s the loudest in the room. But he had just came off of being on the road for a month, so he was super tired, and diamond* was sick, like he had the flu.
But Tezzus kept calling me and telling me like, “bro, I have to make the album, I have to make this album.” So I'm like, “all right, bro, I got a session tonight, you gotta be here if you wanna make the album or you're not gonna make it.”
So he pulled up, he like half sleep, he falling, he can't stay up for nothing. He damn near -- I’ve never seen Tezzus this quiet in my life. Like, it was weird. But he got up and did the verse and just went back and fell back asleep. It was just so crazy to me that he was like, I love you so much, my body is over with, but I had to come do this for you.
But the craziest session is definitely “Designer Junkie” because me and dior [diorvsyou] had just went and spent like… I don't even want to say how many thousands we spent at the jeweler, but we went and bought some jewelry and we damn near cried together. We like, “bro I remember we was… piss poor, like, six months ago.” I'm on the song saying like, “oh yeah, I got this on today, I got cuban chain on today, I got pointers on my wrist.”
It was a surreal moment for me cause I'm like, “damn, it's like my almost ‘I made it’ moment.” I don't feel like I made it yet, but it was my “I made it” moment.
Akbar Khan
