Ski Mask the Slump God Leaks His Own Mixtape, Explains It All on Twitch

Last night, a very disgruntled Ski Mask the Slump God, one of the hottest upcoming rappers in the game, decided to leak his highly anticipated mixtape, The Book of Eli, on SoundCloud. Sick of release-date delays, he took to Instagram Live to call out his manager for holding it up.

“He keeps pushing my tape back because he knows I’m gonna fire him,” the rapper declared. "40K comments on this post and I'll drop the tape — fuck my old management."

Now, this stunt isn’t out of the ordinary. Rap artists with difficult major-label deals often threaten to leak their records after frequent delays in release. But what Ski Mask did next was the most 2018 response possible: He went to Twitch, the website where people live-stream themselves playing videogames.

After the mixtape was removed from SoundCloud by Ski Mask’s management, the rapper took to the videogame-streaming site with his gaming buddy Krazygio, a foulmouthed Peruvian-American dude who also streams with fellow South Florida rapper Pouya. Apparently, Krazygio was the one who leaked the tape on Ski's behalf, and he spent around an hour answering questions, complaining about a doctor’s appointment in the morning, and lobbing insults in a chatroom while playing tracks off the mixtape on his gaming microphone. The onscreen image for the impromptu news conference was the shooter game Fortnite, where Krazygio’s avatar, a knight in black armor, idled onscreen as if answering the questions.
Eventually, Ski's avatar, wearing a pink bunny costume, joined. They began playing the game. Ski clarified info he posted on his Instagram story, namely the mixtape would be released either May 4 or 11 at the latest. Meanwhile, leakers continued to upload the mixtape to alternate YouTube, SoundCloud, DatPiff, and Google Drive accounts, with the label continually removing the bootlegs.

“It's off youtube too?!” he exclaimed at one point. “This shit is cereal!!”

So, basically, last night consisted of my rushing to SoundCloud to hear this mixtape, only to see it disappear before my eyes, then tracking down the rapper's Twitch channel to figure out why, then watching him play a videogame in which his avatar wears a pink bunny shit while shooting opponents and bemusedly reciting lyrics such as "poopity scoop" from Kanye West's new song, "Lift Yourself."

As for the mixtape, I was able to hear some of it in the brief time it was up, and what I heard was tremendous. Ski raps faster than Usain Bolt runs, and the rapper's comedic, punchy lines are enhanced by excellent production that stays faithful to the anarchic, punk vibe of South Florida SoundCloud rap. Several of the tracks were produced by Timbaland, and features were supplied by Offset and Rich the Kid. When it eventually does see an official release, it'll have been well worth the wait.

Oh, and Krazygio? If you're out there, New Times would love an interview.