T: That's a great segue because I wanted you to talk about Dilla, I know he meant a lot to you.
S: Dilla was my hero. My inspiration for everything, besides Chi Ali which made me want to start rhyming. Dilla was really my drive, just seeing how incredible he was. I've never heard one wack beat from that dude a day in my life. Of course you gonna favor some over others but he's never been wack, he's always been outta this world. He was so ahead of his time. I met Dilla in 2004 at a Madvillian concert up here in New York, Dilla was like a suprise guest, no-one knew he would be there. I waited outside for the longest and I finally saw Dilla come out at four in the morning. We kicked it, we chopped it up. I told him how much of a fan I was, and I was in awe when I met him. Right away we switched numbers, we switched info and it was crazy. To this day I still have his cell phone number, I refuse to delete it. I would call him, we would chop it up on the phone. He would tell me about new things he had going on, and we would talk about beats, it was sick. That was one of the most incredible moments of my life, my career, everything. Just having his phone number and being able to call him, and him pick up the phone was crazy. It's something to this day, I don't believe it happened but it did, it happened to me. When he passed it crushed me just like it crushed the rest of the world. I did the Dilla tribute, "Sky's Last Donut", and it wound up being one of the top ten most downloaded songs in the country last April. It was in Spin Magazine, it was all over the net, it was all over the forums and the websites. Dilla was the greatest, there'll never be another to touch him, and I love him like family. We gon' keep the legacy alive.

T: Tell us about Custom Made.
S: Custom Made is a company and a crew that I started with two of my peoples, my man DJ Nyce and my man Extra. We started that a couple years ago, maybe like 2002, 2003. We got incorporated, everything is copyrighted, everything is on the books, we're an official company. It's just something we started to make great music on our own, to have our own studio, to have our own graphic artists in-house, to have our own photographers in-house, to have our own crew, our own producers around us, affiliation with big producers, as well as up and coming producers who are getting ready to be the next big thing. It was just about doing everything internally, and doin' everything with the family. You're only as strong as the person next to you, and you're only as strong as that link on that chain you with. We decided to build a strong family and we got some incredible artists. My man Torae, who was on the Primo song with me, my man Zeqway, my man Yatta Barz, my man Wrecka, there's a good amount of us. We're just here to do it. We're here to make incredible music. And the reason why we chose the name Custom Made is because we feel like when we make music it's relatable to anybody and everybody. It's like when you get a shirt custom made for you or a pair of pants custom made for you, it's only fittin' you. It's made perfect for you, it's made to fit you 100% perfectly and nobody else. And when we make music, we feel like even if we don't know who you are, we never met you but when you hear our music you're gonna feel like we made it just for you, like we made it to only fit you because it fits you in your life so perfectly and you relate to it so much you gon' feel like it's custom made.

T: You have a connection to Sickamore also.
S: Sickamore's a friend of mine up at Atlantic. We're actually from the same building, the same projects, Ebbets Field Projects. He lived a couple floors down from me. He's doing some incredible things at Atlantic. The thing with him is he's so young and he's doing so much. That's an inspiration to anybody, let alone me, but anybody else trying to do it in Hip-Hop or trying to do it in general.

T: You have an official situation yet?
S: No, I don't have a situation. We taking meetings everyday, me and my management, my man Rick Caps. People are hollering at us wanting to know what's going on, how can they be down with the Skyzoo movement. We're just taking it as it comes. We're definitely trying to make something pop by the summer. Cloud 9 really did a lot, man. Me and 9th Wonder did the album and it opened up doors.

Thick: Let start with where you're from and a lil' history.
Skyzoo: I'm from Brooklyn, New York. Born in the '80s, 1982. I moved around Brooklyn a lot as a kid. I just grew up on Hip-Hop since day one. I started rhymin' at nine years-old, and it's been movin' ever since. I fell in love with the music at an early age and just kept it going. Just really put my all into it and been makin' music for a bunch of years now, over a decade actually. That basically sums up my early beginnings and all that. I was influenced by Chi Ali from the Native Tongues movement. When I was a lil' kid, he was like fourteen when he had first dropped his album, and I just fell in love with the whole movement of it, the sound, the fact that he was so young but sounded so mature. I was in awe of it. That really made me wanna start rhymin'. That was the nail in the coffin that made me want to pick up the pen.

T: Yeah, Chi had that flavor that other kid rappers didn't have.
S: The way he wrote, like he had stories as a young kid but from a New York perspective and it wasn't kiddie rap. It wasn't too vulgar but it wasn't kiddie rap. It was real and it just drew me in. That's what seperated it from everything else.

T: Speak on the name?
S: My middle name is Skyler, and my whole family uses that name. They've been using that name since I was a baby basically. So people call me Skyler or Sky for short. And there was a group out when I was born in '82 named Skyy and they were a disco group from Brooklyn, and they had a record out called Skyyzoo. It was supposed to be a kazoo, like an actual kazoo was throughout the beat. So, it was supposed to be a play on the word 'kazoo' but they put Skyy on it after the name of the group. It was a real big record. From there my family used to call me that as a little kid. Just as a lil' nickname they would call me Skyzoo, like my parents, and aunt, and cousins. It sorta stuck, man. So, when I started rhymin' I just kept the name authentic, as opposed to makin' up some other name, I just used what was already there.

T: You weren't heard with the Justus League around the beginning but in the last year or so you've been on everything they do. Speak on that affiliation.
S: Well, that all came about through my man Chaundon, who's in the Justus League. He's the only one in the crew that's not from North Carolina, he's from the Bronx. He lives down there now but he still comes up to New York a couple times a year. He had come up once for his birthday and a friend of mine introduced me to him. I gave him one of my mixtapes on the humble, and he called me the next day, or the same night, or something like that. He called me and was like, "yo, this stuff is crazy, you're stuff is amazing, man. We gotta link up, I'm in town for a couple days, let's go to the studio and mess around". So, I said, "cool, no doubt". So, I brought him out to my studio and we did five songs the first day we were in the studio together. We didn't know each other from a hole in the wall but we had done five songs off the bat. That just showed the chemistry right there. He took the stuff back to North Carolina and was playing it for Khrysis, 9th, Pooh, Big Dho and all of them. A couple months later, next thing you know, they (Justus League) was like, "yo, why don't you have him come down and we can make some music and just bug out". That's what they normally do - you come down for a week, make some records, bug out, have a good time, and see what happens. Me and Khrysis worked real heavily at first, we worked for about six days and we did about fourteen, fifteen songs. And a lot of 'em nobody's even heard yet and these are songs from 2005, like two years ago. We just did a bunch of joints and left it at that. I sorta became an extended family member. For the record, I'm not in the Justus League, I'm not in the Hall of Justus but that's my second family. My team is Custom Made, Custom Made Entertainment is my crew that I started with a couple partners. The Justus League shows me a ton of love and I show them the same amount of love back. It's a good thing.

T: What do you think about 9th Wonder leaving Little Brother?
S: I mean, it's not a bad thing. I know just from knowing them personally, that it's nothing personal at all, it's strictly business. I know they're still great friends. Pooh and Tay are obviously still together and 9th is ridiculously busy. He's so talented and that talent comes with the gift and the curse. The curse is, being so busy. He's teaching a class at North Carolina Central (College), he's DJing parties with the True School Movement that he got started, and he's making beats for everybody. Let alone the people in North Carolina who know who he is and are fans of his, and run up to him on the street and want beats and want to do things with him. He's the man in North Carolina, along with all over the world. He's dropping albums with Murs, he's dropping albums with Jean Grae, Buckshot, he did an album with me, along with the industry stuff, the Lloyd Banks stuff, the Mary J. Blidge stuff, the Game stuff, he's working real heavy with Camp Lo now. I understand where all of them came to that agreement at and it's not a bad thing. It's like with Slum Village when J-Dilla left. When Dilla left they were still great friends. People thought they hated each other but they were great firends, it's just on a business level it didn't make sense any more because Dilla became so busy he didn't have enough time that the group deserved. Plus, they (Big Pooh and Phonte) want to change their sound a lil' bit and try something new. It's good for all parties involved. It's gonna give 9th more time to do what he gotta do, it's gonna give Tay and Pooh more time to do what they gotta do, and you still gonna hear more music from them. You still gonna hear Little Brother on 9th Wonder beats every now and then. So, it's not a bad thing.