Skillz Unleashes His Annual Year-End Recap With ‘2015 Rap Up’
Today is New Year's Eve and 2016 is upon is. 2015 way be all but a wrap, but speaking of raps, no year is complete without rapper Skillz giving a summary of the year's biggest events in lyrical form. The Virginia lyricist obliged us with what we'd all been waiting for with his "2015 Rap Up."
Kicking off the track rapping "Boom-bay-yay, people, lend me your ear / It's time to say goodbye to the previous year / The highs and the lows, let's get it in gear / The 2014 Rap Up you know why I'm here," purposely mixing up the year as a jab to Steve Harvey's now infamous fail at this year's Miss Universe pageant.
Opting to do his bidding over a relatively obscure beat rather than a well-known instrumental, Skillz digs deep into his bag of tricks and makes sure to highlight the more buzzworthy news events of the year with ease. Rap's biggest newcomer of 2015 and a few of the community's more popular shows catch nods when Skillz spits "'Trap Queens' hit the scene, Fetty Wap on fire / And if you wasn't watching Power, it was probably Empire / Cookie and Lucious was doing the most / If I ever had real beef, I'd call Tommy and Ghost," during his annual rundown.
Skillz is also very much in tune with the news cycle outside of rap as he address social injustice that was commonplace this year.
"And the cops still killing us, you can't deny it / What they did to Freddie Gray caused an all out riot / It's us against them if you look at all the factors / From Black Lives Matter to All Lives Matter / Agree to disagree, but I'll tell you this much / Yeah, Black Live Matter, but they only matter to us," he raps.
Congratulations to Dr. Dre's long-awaited return are included ("Dre finally dropped an album, that move was trill / Best flick, Straight Outta Compton, that movie was ill"), as well as the rap game's biggest feud of the year between Drake and Meek Mill. Lines like, "And I remember when them two dudes was friends / Drake got him wit' the bars but the memes did him in / You can't win on the internet and that's the facts / After that, the whole world was singing "Back to Back" show who Skillz felt was the victor while also noting the power of the internet and public opinion.
From ISIS and Adele to Pattie LaBelle and Kim Kardashian and Kanye West's newborn, Skillz does a stellar job covering all of the news topics of 2015.
Skillz shows why we wait at the end of the year for his humorous commentary with the "Rap Up." This year's edition is another hit for the record books.
Happy New Year!