SKIP-DAWG explores the distance between his everyday self and his musical alter ego on Lyrical Playboy, returning to recording after nearly a decade away.
Introspective rap meets a sultry R&B hook and alternative rock touches, balancing intimate verses with a playful refrain.
He explains:
Lyrical Playboy is really about the two sides of me. There’s the regular person I am in everyday life, and then there’s SKIP-DAWG, a more confident and expressive version of myself that comes out through the music.
The Havertown, PA rapper had put out five albums prior to his career being seriously disrupted by lung problems. He’s had over 20 instances of collapsed lung and has had eight major lung operations. He now has permanent nerve damage and is in agony with chronic chest pain.
Alongside his return to music he’s also launching the Collapsed Lung Project to raise awareness of recurrent collapsed lungs and the pain, the recovery and the complications that go with it as per his own experience.
He says:
After living with Bleb Disease for 20 years, after having tried an extraordinary number of measures to manage my chronic health and lung issues, and now after having read thousands of personal accounts astonishingly similar to mine, I feel resolved to speak on behalf of a club that no one wants to belong to: collapsed lung sufferers.
Our condition is marked by extraordinary, life-interrupting pain and trauma, from the initial lung collapse to the medical interventions and surgeries, lengthy and painful recoveries, and all-too-frequent complications like nerve damage.
Lyrical Playboy gives him the space to express a facet of himself that goes beyond the medical history.
The song is about the character he brings to the mic, and his wider body of work creates space for conversations about living with a long-term condition.