Skilla Baby and his manager Nique are sitting on the fourth floor of Detroit’s Capitol Square Building relaxed and chill. Nique is scrolling on his phone while Skilla is on FaceTime with fellow emcee (and cousin) Tay-B talking about who can beat who on the basketball court. Skilla’s apparel is video-shoot ready — jeans, Timbs, and a blue Rhude varsity jacket (which happens to be the same one worn in his video “Icky Vicky Vibes”). A diamond-encrusted link hangs around his neck with two charms also covered in diamonds. One says “WETM” and the other is in the shape of a tent with a tree behind it.
“That’s my logo and it represents me and the group of people with me,” Skilla says. “I got a label called ‘We Eat The Most’ and it just represents us. If you look in your phone you can find that tent emoji. It’s the same thing. I even got it tatted on me.”
Born Trevon Gardner, Skilla Baby, 24, has quickly become one of Detroit’s biggest hip-hop stars. He has eight YouTube videos with at least 2 million views each. He has standouts verses on both Kash Doll’s “Oh Boy” and Peezy’s “2 Million Up” remix.
A large part of his fanbase is women. “I ain’t gon lie, everybody that come to my shows be like, ‘Yo front row is full of girls!’ I thought that’s how everybody’s front row look,” Skilla says with a smirk. “I don’t know where that came from though. I don’t get that part, I just be living my regular life.”
Skilla’s first motivation to start writing came when he was a child, he says. In fifth grade he was assigned to memorize the Langston Hughes poem “Mother to Son,” and a spark was lit.
“We had to study this poem in school, we had to recite it in school,” Skilla says. “My mom had helped me study it. And then something about my mom just helping me recite this poem just resonated with me.” He then recites the first line of the poem:
“Well, son, I’ll tell you: Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.”
“[Langston] just tore it up in the beginning,” Skilla says. “I just listened to the imagery and everything, it just reminded me of me.”
Around that same time Skilla’s mom moved to Toledo. Skilla wasn’t a fan of the home of the Mud Hens and opted to stay with his dad in Detroit instead. He admits he was a “troubled kid but not a troublemaker,” the kind of kid who’s inherently smart but was a magnet for mischief. Moving in with his dad was a bit of a culture shift as he was much older (his dad was 52 when Skilla was born), and much more of a disciplinarian.
“He made me write a 31-page essay on Thurgood Marshall,” Skilla says. “It really was a handwriting thing. I had to write the essay in 31 pages, then he was like, ‘After you write that, then you gotta type it.’”
However, growing up around his dad expanded his music taste. Skilla knows just as many Luther Vandross and Anita Baker songs as he does Lil Wayne and Meek Mill.
“I’m influenced by a lot,” Skilla says. “My dad grew up in the Motown era, he would tell me stuff about Graystone Ballroom where all Motown singers and stuff used to go… he was a big influence on my music. He would watch TV and play the radio, so music was just always in me.”
After behavioral issues caused Skilla to bounce around a few high schools, he eventually landed at Oak Park High School. Like many parents, Skilla’s dad figured keeping his son busy would equate into keeping him out of trouble. Skilla’s primary passion at the time was basketball, a sport which he excelled at. It’s actually the origin of his rap moniker, and he even befriended fellow emcee Baby Money at Joe Dumars Fieldhouse during a pick-up game at 12 years old.
“I started hooping in second grade, that’s how I got my original nickname, ‘Skillz,’” he says. “I had told my coach, it was a 5th grade team, ‘Let me play, I got skills.’”
But like everything else in his life, Skilla’s dad wanted him to have a strict discipline toward basketball. As much as that irritated Skilla, he understands why he demanded it. “I couldn’t even have fun with it no more because he didn’t even want me to talk in practice,” Skilla adds. The advice paid off: if you click around Oak Park’s 2015-2016 basketball stats, you’ll find a plethora of double-digit scoring games from Skilla. However, midway through high school his life drastically changed when his dad passed away. Skilla was only 15.
“It forced me to be more mature, and then I just had to fend for myself,” Skilla says. “I’m one of those people that I learn from bumping my head sometimes. I learn from trial and error.”
At first he moved back in with his mother, but that living arrangement was short lived. By 2016 Skilla found himself in a crux he didn’t ask to be in.
“I really needed some money,” Skilla says. “I was staying place-to-place, I was damn near homeless. I had got kicked out the crib at like 16. My mamma had her husband. I didn’t like him and he didn’t like me.”
By this time Skilla was still in the early stages of his hip-hop career. He released a song called “Crazy” in January of that same year that earned him some respect among his classmates, but not much else. Skilla kept writing and dropping music, but he was still finding his voice and blowing up off rap was still years away.
“I didn’t want to go to college, I didn’t have no [basketball] offers,” he says. “I didn’t have no offers because I kept getting in trouble. And I wasn’t one of the best players in the nation. I was the best on my team and all that, but I just knew I wanted to get some money.”
With basketball off the table, his focus shifted to funding his music career. Beats, video production, and studio time weren’t cheap as Skilla was still struggling to take care of himself. He worked a full-time job and dabbled in a few street hustles.
“I worked a job, people thought I was corny for that but I always had more money than people,” he says through a laugh. “I can’t be in the streets because I had a job. And then I didn’t even look up to the streets, it’s just something I had to do. I don’t look up to the streets. … I don’t want to be labeled no ‘street guy,’ forreal forreal,” he adds.
Skilla’s job history is almost as long as his song catalog. He’s worked at Bucharest Grill, McDonald’s, Walmart, and Red Lobster. There was even a period where he walked two miles daily to the studio after his shift at Captain Jay’s Fish & Chicken ended. And when he wasn’t in the studio, he was trying to get stage time anywhere he could.
He started going to the showcase put on Hot 107.5’s DJBJ. “I was paying my last money,” Skilla says. “Everything I made at work to do those. … You had to pay $150 to be a part of the showcase … Every week I kept losing. I went for like a year straight nonstop.”
By the end of 2017 Skilla’s work ethic and dedication caught the eye of Detroit rapper Sada Baby. The “Bloxk Party” emcee took the 19-year-old Skilla under his wing for an informal mentorship.
“He found out I was walking to the studio, he made me quit my job” Skilla says. “Then I met Juan, who’s Sada manager, and he helped me to the utmost extent. I had stayed with him for a little minute. And Sada was taking me everywhere, to all the shows. Being around Sada did help me.”
By 2019 Skilla’s music was starting to resonate and his fanbase began to grow. He dropped the project Push That Shit Out Skilla, his most complete and diverse body to that point, which saw him spit socially conscious lyrics about the politics of street life and racism in the first single “Trevon”: “They wanna see me work ‘till I break down/ come home from work, sell work that I break down,” Skilla raps.
He followed that up with the street-centered single “Mystical.”
“I put it down for the hood just because/ ’cause I know how it feels when you live in the slums,” he raps. “Stacking every dollar I remember we was buzz/ Ls feel the worst when you building it from crumbs.”
“They was like, ‘Yeah, dawg can really rap’ after that,” Skilla says.
Once 2021 rolled in, Skilla could see his life progressing. He was done couch-surfing and moved back in with his mother for a bit. His follow-up projects “Crack Music,” “Carmelo Bryant,” and “Standing on Business” were well-received, and he was considered one of the most talented young emcees in the city. All that came to a halt when he was arrested in Ionia County for assault. After careful consideration of Ionia county’s 91% white population, he figured it would be best to take a 30-day sentence for pleading no contest rather than risking a lengthy jail sentence from a jury trial. Skilla reported to jail January 28, 2022 and was released in April of that same year.
“I felt like some big stuff was happening that I wasn’t there for but when I got out, I had gained some more momentum. Something about jail and rappers people just think you about that life,” he says with a laughing shrug.
Around the same time he was getting out of jail, his single “Tay B Style” had become his hottest song to date. The MIA JAYC-produced track became a surprise spring banger. “Tay B Style” and a remix that was released shortly after have a combined 11 million YouTube views. But just as his career was reaching a new level, he was shot that July. The gunshot wound didn’t do any major physical damage, and Skilla Baby’s popularity unexpectedly soared.
“I got shot, they thought I was 50 Cent,” he says. “I get shot, a whole bunch of stuff happened in the streets, and boom, people started listening to my music out of nowhere. I’m at home eating Doritos, listening to people going crazy on the internet. They thought I was 50 Cent because I got shot one day and the next day I was in the club partying.”
“I got shot, they thought I was 50 Cent,” he says. “I get shot, a whole bunch of stuff happened in the streets, and boom, people started listening to my music out of nowhere.”
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“That bullet changed him,” says his manager Nique. “He didn’t listen prior to that bullet. That bullet changed his mental, his whole outlook on life. He just got a better value and perspective on life. He’s always been a smart kid, he’s just a renegade.”
“It just made me respect life and how I move more,” Skilla adds. “And I take everything for face value, I don’t take nothing lightly.”
Although Skilla makes light of his street misfortunes, he’s correct in his assessment at how going to jail and getting shot unexpectedly boosted his popularity. Hip-hop is fickle like that. And to be even more straightforward, either one of those situations could have ended with much worse outcomes. Detention facilities and graveyards are both filled with hundreds of talented emcees. But Skilla refusing to accept any agglomeration of street cred from fans is a rare sign of transparency and a bit of assurance that he won’t put himself in those situations again.
By that fall Skilla says about a dozen record labels reached out to him about signing him to a deal, including, Atlantic, Def Jam, Columbia, and United Matters just to name a few. He weighed all his offers and chose Geffen Records, a subsidiary of Universal Music and Interscope.
“It just turned into a bidding war,” Skilla says. “So I just went with the most family-oriented one and they had the best deal. I talked to Tay B, Nique, Juan. They matter, but the most important part was having great representation. The lawyer mattered the most. The lawyer gone tell them what you want, and it was stuff that I could absolutely deal with and stuff that I could absolutely not deal with.”
He adds, “People think I got the best deal in Detroit as far as money. But I got the best deal as far as percentages, as far as what I got to give up. I’m a new artist and I’m a priority at my label. That’s my biggest thing. I don’t need all the money, but I want priority.”
Skilla’s first official release on Geffen was the We Eat The Most EP in December of 2022. The lead single “Man Down” was a notable Detroit banger, but the next single “Icky Vicky Vibes,” a clever lyrical song with a video full of Fairly OddParents overtones. The song highlights Skilla’s Swiss army knife-like diversity toward his music: Skilla can rap about any subject on any kind of beat.
“Every time they see me elevatin’, they get teary eyed/ Could’ve lost my life a couple times, it was clearly God,” he raps. “Niggas fear the guys, only thing I fеar is God/ Only thing I hear is God when I’m in my Fear of Gods.”
“Certain beats, when I hear them, I gotta write to them,” he says. “When I write I got this certain flow, like you can tell when I write because the flow is just crazy. I got this non-stop flow when I’m writing my stuff that it just dont stop.”
“Marty McFly” is a Back to the Future-inspired sentimental song in which Skilla goes back in time to the year 2006 in the video.
“I live in a world where niggas hide behind a screen/ I can’t believe these niggas makin’ it okay to be a fiend,” he raps. “Niggas really’ll look at you strange ’cause you say you clean.”
Skilla claims he isn’t just talking shit those lyrics. He made a conscious decision to no longer get inebriated in any way a couple of years ago.
“I don’t do anything,” he says. “If I drink, it’s socially and I’ll have the same cup all night. … I never did hard drugs. I smoked weed and I drank before, but I analyzed my life. I really didn’t care, I was too nonchalant, and I didn’t have anything going on. I was a good artist but I wasn’t motivated. Without none of that I’m motivated.”
Skilla’s next project is a collaboration between him and hometown hero Tee Grizzley that drops on April 14.
“We worked together a couple of times,” Skilla says. “We liked how we worked together and we felt it made sense if we did a project together.”
The video for their single “Gucci Coat” was shot in Detroit this past winter, which set the comments section on Instagram ablaze. It seemed to be an odd pairing because Tee Grizzley and Skilla’s mentor and friend Sada Baby had a very public feud with Tee in 2020. Fans wondered how Skilla was able to circumvent that while keeping his relationship with Sada intact.
Skilla maintains that Sada and Tee’s conflict predates him, and it’s no different than having two relatives that have beef.
“At the end of the day this is my business, and nobody gonna run my business or put money in my pocket that I don’t respect their opinion,” he says, adding, “We don’t have any awkward energy because me and Sada have our own understanding. We didn’t even talk about it.”
Skilla says the biggest misconception about him is that he’s just some “young dumb kid.” That perception is fading away rapidly. As his celebrity status keeps ascending, so does his maturity and willingness to help those who were in similar situations as he was. This prom season, Skilla says he’s inviting Detroit high school honor roll students to write an essay on how music affected their lives. The top five essays will be selected, and Skilla is going to pay for them and their dates to go to prom.
“I didn’t want to make it about less fortunate kids, because I didn’t want to expose some kids who were less fortunate,” he says. “So I provided an incentive for being good in school because that’s what I think prom should be.”
Ultimately, Skilla is the sum of his father’s work ethic and that Langston Hughes poem his mother helped him recite. He was able to find that same dedication in music his father wanted him to have in basketball and life. Moving forward, he says that a project with him, Tay B, and Baby Money may drop this year along with another solo project. He boasts he’ll have features no one expects him to have, and possibly a tour. When asked about what advice he would give other aspiring hip-hop artists, he talks about not giving up and identifying your fanbase.
“Some people don’t like my music, and I don’t like other people’s music. What we got in common is that we kept going,” he says. “I tell people all the time it’s about finding your target audience. Whatever you are selling, keep knocking at the same door and it’s going to open. Find you a target audience and keep going.”
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