Behind the Beats with EA Ski

EA Ski
Oakland, Ca

Notables:
“Pros VS Joes” – Ice Cube
“Dr. Dre & Mr. Ski” – Dr. Dre

Are you an artist or producer?
Actually I’ma artist, as well as a producer, so in the midst of doin’ my artistry and shoppin’ my stuff around, one of the labels heard it while they was workin’ on an artist by the name of Spice 1 who was signed to JIVE. They contracted me to do some stuff for him and his album went platinum. That put a lot of notoriety on the production that I was doin’ back then. I did remixes for Naughty By Nature, I did stuff for Das EFX; it was just a gang of stuff, man!

When did your professional music career begin?
It really started when Spice 1 blew up. That was around ’91-‘92. But where I really got my notoriety from is when I sold three or four million on the Friday soundtrack. I had a song on there called “Blast If I Have To,” and that was huge.

Who produced your music?
I produced my own records, as well as songs for E-40, The Luniz, Ice-T; I did a lot of records for a lot of artists. I brought Master P in the game.

How so?
The truth is, Master P lived in Richmond, CA before he started claimin’ the south. He was hustlin’, tryin’ to get on. He began building his name doin’ compilations. He started putting me and a lot of big Bay Area names on his West Coast Bad Boys projects, and he was marketing it like “Master P presents,” so a lot of people thought it was his album. It was, but it wasn’t really him on it. He was marketing himself off of artists who were already established. Brian Turner, the president of Priority Records, called me and asked, “Should I do this deal with Master P?” That deal was based off of my word.

What business did you and Master do?
I was on his Bout It, Bout It soundtrack. I had a song on there called “Faces of Death.”

When did your career as an artist begin?
I was signed to Priority Records in ’94 then I signed to Relativity Records in ’96-’97. I’ve been signed as an artist pretty much my whole career, but I’ve also been producing my own stuff and other people’s. I did a big song called “Showdown” with Montell Jordan, which had the #1 video in the country at one point in time.

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