If you’ve tuned into the radio in the ATL  recently,

there’s a 99.99 percent chance you’ve heard the voice of Frank Ski, the

host of Hotlanta’s # 1 morning show (Frank and Wanda in the morning /

V-103).  Ski, with over 20 years of deejaying and radio experience under

his belt, has withstood the test of time and is a force to be reckoned

with. From being shouted out by Jermaine Dupri on the city’s anthem

“Welcome To Atlanta,” to rubbing elbows with the likes of Outkast, T.I. ,

Young Jeezy, Ludacris,  to “politicing” with Barack Obama or Atlanta’s mayor Shirley

Franklin, Frank is loved and respected by a diverse audience and is a

DJ many aspire to emulate.

Despite Frank’s hectic schedule and demanding

career, he still embraces his deejaying foundation and rocks the

turntables at parties throughout  Atlanta. He’s one of the few on-air

personalities capable of hosting a # 1 morning show by day, and

“rockin’ da party” by night.

Frank, a Miami native, got his start in radio working at the station

at the University of District of Columbia where he launched one of the first

hip-hop shows ever.  His ratings were “through the roof”, and his

phrase, “Oh Baby, Oh Baby,” became a staple throughout the D.C. /

Baltimore market. Eventually, he was offered jobs in Baltimore at WEBB,

V 103 and 92Q. His overwhelming popularity, attributed to his magnetic

personality, high ratings, and his hit record “Doo Doo Brown”

with the group Two Hyped Brothers and A Dog, enabled him to dominate Baltimore.

These days, the nine-year ATLien, with future plans of opening a Wine

& Martini Lounge, a venue for live performances, and a restaurant, is

on a mission to secure his legacy in Atlanta. AllHipHop.com caught

up with Frank to discuss his past, rockin’ the parties at JD’s new

club, his kids foundation, and his take on today’s DJs….

AllHipHop.com: Frank, what’s goin’ on man

Frank Ski: I’ve been good, stayin’ busy

AllHipHop.com: Yeah I know you are man, what’s been crackin’ in Hotlanta ?

Frank Ski: It’s crazy boy, it’s somethin’ everyday, you know how it is down here.

AllHipHop.com: It’s been a while since we hung out at Club Visions that spot’s gone now right ?

Frank Ski: Yeah Visions is gone and they’re trying to open another

Visions but the crew that had Visions went out and bought another club

called The Compound which was actually their competition. I’m actually

doing Jermaine Dupri’s club on Fridays [Studio 72] and then….

AllHipHop.com: Right I was gonna ask you about that, it’s Krush Groove night right ?

Frank Ski: Yeah what’s going on in the country now is that the older

audience doesn’t go to clubs like they used to, they’re chillin’ more

going to restaurants and bars and lounges and the younger generation is

still clubbin’ but their idea of clubbin’ ain’t like we used to club

you know. Their thing is kinda like more standing around mackin’ and

chillin’ than actually jammin’ and packing the dance floor. Basically

what JD did was brought me in because I’m still able pull that older

crowd that likes to dance and party.

AllHipHop.com: Yeah actually that was one of the things I wanted to ask you

about because you’re like one of the few morning show hosts that can

hold down the duty of doing a morning show by day, and then maneuver at

night on the 1s and 2s. What’s your formula behind that and more

importantly, when do you sleep man ?

Frank Ski: Right isn’t that somethin’ dogg? It’s like crazy because

when I was younger in Baltimore, it was no problem burning the candle

at both ends you know what I’m sayin’, but now it’s harder because I’m

older plus I have more responsibilities, so instead of me being able to

just go to a club and leave at two in the morning, get three hours of

sleep, get a nap in, then get up and go to work, get off at 10 [AM] and

go home and crash again, now I got responsibilities all day. You know,

got kids and all kinds of other stuff so I don’t get that crash time

like I used to get.

AllHipHop.com: That’s crazy, I remember back in the day when I was a teenager

listening to your show on UDC’s college radio station [Washington, DC]

and then later you went to WEBB, V-103 and 92 Q in Baltimore. Tell us a

little about that era and your entrance into the radio game.

Frank Ski: I had always wanted to do something with Hip-Hop because,

the thing that got me to fall in love with hip hop is you know when you

hear Puffy and people from Manhattan say “Harlem World?” Harlem World

used to be a club and one of the owners was my uncle. As a kid I used

to be up in Harlem World and being there kinda introduced me to the

originators of Hip-Hop and rap and basically I would be up in there you

know trying to be a little young MC myself. So I kinda got into it

in that vein.  I was growing up in high school in Miami but spending all

my long weekends, summers and holidays in New York, so I was like hip

hop crazy in New York and I was bringing that back to Miami. I got

introduced to that hip hop game real young and started doing everything

from… I had a break dance crew that won the national break dance

competition.

What happened was actually at one of the break dance competitions

there was a guy who found out about it that ran UDC’s college radio

station. I was going to UDC so he asked me if I would do a radio show

surrounding break dancing and I did this show called “breakers delight”

on WDCU which was UDC’s radio station it was a FM station, and

everybody used to listen to it from DC and you could even get it in

Baltimore. That’s how I became popular in DC and in Baltimore by doing

that Saturday afternoon radio show. After a while I got offered a job

in Baltimore on another station [WEBB] but I actually worked both

stations, UDC’s station on Saturday in DC but then I did Friday,

Saturday and Sunday in Baltimore at WEBB which was an all Hip-Hop AM

station. WEBB got so popular because it was the only place to get Hip-Hop in Baltimore that it started competing against station V-103 and

then I got brought over to V-103 and that’s how I basically got into

radio.AllHipHop.com: Yeah, so it was like a natural progression or transition.

Frank Ski: It was, it really was and then working in radio

developing my voice helped me a lot in deejaying. But what really

propelled me to be a mixer was when I went into the studio one time in

D.C. and at that time I didn’t know anything about the studio, I didn’t

know anything about beat count I didn’t understand bars and measures.

You know now rappers be like “yo give me 16 bars” and can count 16

bars.  Well as a DJ I didn’t know that every single record is made in 4,

8 or 16 bars, every 8 bars or every 16 bars something changes in the

record. I didn’t really know that, but when I learned that s**t.

AllHipHop.com: Yeah, that was it huh ?

Frank Ski: That was it, because then I was able to mix records

better, I understood how records went together even if records didn’t

go together,  I knew when to make a record drop.  I hear DJs today and

they’re just throwing s**t in and I’m like they have no clue of when

to drop a record and when not to drop a record you know what I’m

sayin’? That was one of the things that really helped me with deejaying

and it got to the point where that’s my love, that’s what I love to do,

I just happened to get paid for it but really, for real – I deejayed

for years for free.

AllHipHop.com: I actually wrote an editorial last month about a new breed of

“DJs” that call themselves “DJ so and so” and have never even been on a

set of turntables because of iPods, MP3 players and all that stuff.  What’s your take on today’s DJs and what advice do you have for aspiring DJs ?

Frank Ski: I go back to when I first fell in love with radio in New

York and a guy named Frankie Crocker. He was one of these classic radio

cats like Donnie Simpson and s**t.  Or how a young person would look at

me now, somebody that’s been in the game so long. His tag was “The

Chief Rocker Frankie Crocker” and MCs who came out that used the tag

like in the VH-1 Hip-Hop Honors when they honored Busy Bee it was like

“Chief Rocker Busy Bee” because they used to really rock parties, you

understand what I’m sayin’?  They would really rock parties. I think

nowadays the way I judge a DJ is like, who can move the crowd ? Who’s a real party rocker ?  Who walks in and changes the dynamic of

the crowd as soon as they walk in and get on the turntables and get on

the mic?  I look at it now like, less than just the skill of being

able to mix and scratch or whatever, it’s like who can really entertain

the crowd ?

AllHipHop.com: Yeah who has that swagger, who can really….

Frank Ski: Who has that swagger !! That’s it, you know what I’m

sayin’?  A lot of cats don’t have that swagger. They can scream, and they

can drop a couple of hot records, but you know what,  I can give my

6 year old son the top 10 Hip-Hop records and tell him when to drop ’em

and he can do the same s**t.   That don’t mean nothin’. But can you go in

and rock a party and not play the top 10 songs ?

AllHipHop.com: You’re speaking from experience there. You’ve been holdin ‘ it

down consistently for a while now, what would you credit as being the

key to your longevity ?

Frank Ski: Originality, originality because if you look at any of

the popular DJs they’ve all got something that made them original and

different. It’s funny because at first, people would say the top DJ in

the country was Kid Capri.  But after a while, everybody came out was

sounding like Kid Capri, like everybody that came out of New York wanted

to sound like him. They had the same slang, the same words, the same

everything and what had to happen at that point was Kid had to keep

reinventing himself to stay fresh and stay on top.  That’s the

problem nowadays, a lot of kids are copying somebody else instead of

finding out who they are. AllHipHop.com: You’re deeply involved in the community there in Atlanta and you

started a foundation for the kids.  What are some of the  projects, businesses and events that you’ve got going on.

Frank Ski: When I was in Baltimore and D.C., I always donated money

to parks and rec programs for kids. This is the sad part with the black

community, a lot of the white community doesn’t have this problem. The

mistake a lot of our black athletes make is by being lazy when it comes

to giving money to charities. Their agents will tell them “Ok so and

so, you’ve got this big NFL contract, now you gotta give 10 percent of

the money back” Most of the athletes give 10 percent of their money

back to the team’s foundation that they play for, because it’s easy,

the team is paying them the money, they just sign off 10 percent of

their check, and it automatically comes out and they give 10 percent of

the money back to the team they play for. Where do they put that money

? Are they going in the hood to put that money in ? They’re not, so

what’s happening is we got all of these blacks athletes and their money

is not getting back to the parks [in the neighborhoods] that they

played for.

So I started my foundation thinking I could at least encourage the

athletes to at least give the money to me and then I would put the

money back into the parks. But the funny thing about it is, I get less

from the black athletes than I do from the white athletes. Black people

just don’t give back dog. We don’t give back to our colleges, we don’t

give back to our schools, we don’t give back to our parks, we don’t

give back to our neighborhoods. 

So I started the foundation by doing that but now, I gotta go to

corporate clients in order to get those sponsorships now, it is what it

is. What I do with my foundation is we create experience opportunities

for kids. We throw the biggest youth Super Bowl in America, 20,000

people come out. We get the top four teams and we invite them to play

in the Bowl, and they have a playoff weekend and then the two winners

play in the Bowl and we give out  20,000 dollars to the park. The park that

won last year is in a very poor neighborhood. Half of the kids in the

neighborhood can’t afford to play football they can’t afford  250 dollars to

go and get uniforms and registration and do everything they need to do.

Half of the kids are being raised by their Grandmamas and are on fixed

income they ain’t got  250 dollars, so how do these kids get to play ? What

this park did when they won was took 10,000 dollars and put it into

scholarships, and they said any kid in that neighborhood that wanted to

play football, the park would pay for them to play.

AllHipHop.com :  Kevin Liles is a long-time friend of yours,

former president of Def Jam, and now a big wig over at Warner Music

Group. The city of Baltimore honored him by naming a street after him. How was that experience ?

Frank Ski: You know it’s funny because when I was on the stage with

Kevin when they named the street after him, I almost wanted to cry and

the reason why is because as we were coming up in Baltimore, it was me

and Kevin and like 10 other dudes. We all were changing the face of

Baltimore when we were young. It’s amazing that only a couple of us

made it out and were able to use what we learned to take it to the next

level. So the fact that Kevin did it, there should of been 10 others

kids coming behind him doing it. There should have been five other

Frank Ski’s there should have been 5 other Kevin Liles. What was the

reason only a couple of us got out of there were be able to do that ? I

don’t know. We created Baltimore club music, created the club scene as

it’s known today, we did so much in Baltimore when we were young.  So when I look at Kevin’s success it makes me cry because I know he

deserves it more than anybody else that I know, when he gives money

back to his neighborhood I know he really means it. For him to have a

street named after him that he grew up on that’s really a block off one

of the main hardest, craziest blocks in Baltimore, I know where he came

from and that’s like so cool. I just wish other ones of us that did it

back in the day would’ve done the same thing, and the unfortunate thing

is Baltimore ain’t changed dog, it’s the same Baltimore I left nine

years ago.

K: Ok well we’re gonna wrap it up but before we do, one last

question and it’s gonna be a funny one too, can we get another “Doo Doo

Brown” record man ?

Frank Ski: Can I tell you what’s funny about that. Everyone has

approached me. It’s funny, you know who just approached me, Luke,

College Park, DJ Smurf, Mr. Collipark, I’ve talked to Ludacris’ people

I’ve talked to so many people. So people are coming to me now and

asking me, will I go back in the studio and do it and the answer is

yes, but I’m gonna open this first project by January / February and

then after that, I’ll go in the studio and help some people out.

Video of Frank Ski joining the city of Baltimore to honor Kevin Liles by naming his childhood street Kevin Liles Dr.

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Odds are you probably know some of Queens rapper Red Cafe’s#### songs already because of the lengthy amount of ghostwriting he has put in the last few years. You may have even seen the video, “May I,” with the Snoop Dogg inspired hook, which was in rotation a few years ago, too.  If you’re up on your mixtape game then you know that he’s been that artist that’s always just about to blow.  He’s moved from Loud to Violator to Arista to Capitol always coming close to dropping an album.  Now with his recent signing to Akon’s Konvict Music and the release of a joint album with DJ Envy, The Co-Op, it looks like the people will finally get to hear the artist they’ve been listening to all along.AllHipHop.com:  You’ve been on the mixtape scene for awhile now. How did you link up with DJ Envy?Red Cafe:  Envy works about ten job [laughs]. I mean, we would see each other in the streets and both of us would just be on our grind.AllHipHop.com:  DJ Envy, what attracted you to want to work with Red Cafe?DJ Envy:  I would see Red everywhere…at clubs, at the radio…just everywhere. He was always in your face and dude could actually spit. It wasn’t like a lot of other artist who come out for two weeks and you don’t see them anymore. He was consistent from week to week. Always fly…always had something new…and when you would hear the new stuff he did it was always something crazy. We started to do a couple of songs together and ended up with about 15 tracks. I was familiar with Koch and we decided to just put out [an] album.AllHipHop.com:  Red Cafe, You’ve been on a number of different labels. What has made you persevere through the label changes?Red Cafe:  I’m not old school now [laughs]! I do it because I love it. I’m a little different from most of the artists out right now. A lot of people do it because it’s the thing to do.  It’s like me shooting hoops. I go out there because I love to do it and not just because I’m getting paid.AllHipHop.com:  What made you decide to sign a deal with Akon?Red Cafe:  Akon is from the streets. I wanted to sign with someone who is not trying to change me or look for a certain type of single. Akon was locked up.  I was locked up.  We come from the same place and can relate to each other. And don’t think I’m trying to glorify getting locked up it jut that I want to give the people honesty. It makes perfect sense that I can break brad with an artist that relates to me.AllHipHop.com: Envy, what’s it like working with an artist like Red Café, and seeing him finally start to break into the mainstream partly because of your efforts?DJ Envy:  It’s great to see an artist with the same drive and fire as you. I call Red at three or four in the morning and he’s in the studio working. His drive is incredible and he understands the game. He knows his business…points, publishing, samples, clearances….he knows the [ins] and outs of the business. With Red I would never say that I broke him. I would more so say that we broke each other. Jordan wouldn’t be Jordan without Pippen and Pippen wouldn’t be Pippen without Jordan. We push each other to do our best. AllHipHop.com:  You’re an artist that has been behind the scene for a number of years ghostwriting. What has it been like seeing your work make others successful?Red Cafe:  I guess you could say I’m successful in one right but at the same time you sit there thinking “Damn, that could have been my record.”  I’m not bitter about anything, though.  I’ve gotten the chance to help others succeed. I’ve watched a lot of artist come from under me and go past me.AllHipHop.com:  Care to mention any of those artists now?Red Cafe:  I mean…I would prefer not to [laughs].  I’m not trying to tear down anyone’s career. Let’s just say I’ve wrote for a lot of your favorite artists.AllHipHop.com:  How is this album going to compare to your first album, The Virus, which was never released?Red Cafe:  It was a different time.  The market has changed.  The music has changed.  There’s that kind of music on there but my album is going to be for today’s listener.  The Virus was recorded when it was recorded.  When I get a chance we’re definitely going to put that out there.  I own all of my albums so it will get out there.AllHipHop.com:  Why didn’t The Virus album come out?Red Cafe:  Politics.  Behind the scenes stuff at the record company.  A lot of executives that have signed me have wound up going through drama and eventually leaving.  When the new guy comes in to replace—he doesn’t necessarily understand me as an artist.  Every time an album hasn’t come out it’s because I stopped it.  I’m not just putting anything out there with my name on it.AllHipHop.com:  Does the ghostwriting and behind the scenes work give you more control over what you put out?Red Cafe:  Absolutely.  That’s where I’m [at] now.  I’m comfortable so I can make decisions like that.  I can make the music that I want to make without having to compromise myself.AllHipHop.com:  Who can we expect to hear on the album?Red Cafe:  Red Cafe…..Red Cafe……Red [laughs]DJ Envy:  [Laughs] Styles P, Jermaine Dupree, Busta Rymes, Kool G Rap, Sean Kingston, Juelz Santana, Nina Sky, Remy Ma….just to name a fewAllHipHop.com:  You’ve got a few New York artists on there.  What is your response to people who say New York has fallen off?DJ Envy:  Red Café was in the studio.  He’s about to drop an album now so it will all be taken care of.Red Cafe:  [Laughs].  People are always going to look at the bad in a situation.  Look at the numbers…if New York stopped putting out records right now there would be no other region that could catch up with us.  We still sell the most records…Jay Z sold 700,000 first week.  50Cent sold 700,000 first week.  We make good music.  We make albums, other people make songs.  No disrespect to anyone but if you want to sell albums you have to actually make an album.DJ Envy:  Ringtones are good for the company so that they can make their money but it sucks for Hip-Hop and the music.  We need to get back to making great records and albums.  This Co-Op record coming out on [October 9] is going to be a complete record.  The album is a great album.  Red and I put our hearts into it.  If you don’t like the album I’ll give you your money back on site.  That’s how confident I feel about the project.AllHipHop.com:  What kind of subjects are going to be addressed on this latest offering that makes it a complete album?DJ Envy:  We’re going to speak to people about our lives and not things that are fabricated.AllHipHop.com:  What are your feelings about being compared to another Queens rapper, 50Cent?Red Cafe:  Well…We’re both from the streets, both from Queens, both signed to Violator, both been shot….We have a lot of similarities but my story is totally different from 50’s story.  If you listen to my records you’ll see we’re totally different.  I love 50 Cent as an artist but we make different types of music.