In 1990, one could enter the Record Bar at Four Seasons Mall in Greensboro, North Carolina, and procure some local enlightenment for around $2.99. This spiritual illumination, both affordable and compact, would come in the form of a 12-inch single by Greensboro’s own Bizzie Boyz. “You want true enlightenment?” inquired MC Willski. “Well, I’m droppin’ it.”
David “Willski” Willis met future collaborator Andreo “Fanatic” Herd in the progressive high school class, Electronic Music. “I wasn’t even in the class,” Willis admits. “I used to skip my classes to go there. The teacher was cool: he used to let me sit there and watch them make beats. I used to get on the mic and do little rhymes and stuff like that.”
Impressed with Willski’s vocal aptitude, Fanatic urged Willis to join his group, then known as the Crush MCs. Willis agreed, but on one condition. “I said, ‘Yo, we need to change the name—the Crush MCs sounds kind of old school!’ ”
So with futuristic moniker in tow, the Boyz enlisted DJ Mix Master D and dancers Move and Groove to complete the bizzie equation. After a series of increasingly popular singles on Southern independents, Houston-based Yo! Records snatched the group up and funded their full-length debut. The result was Droppin’ It, a seamless tapestry of air-brushed braggadocio and boot-knockin’ parlance. “Droppin’ It” is a critique on materialistic knuckleheads and assorted sucker MCs. The B-side, “If You Don’t Want Me,” new jack swings for the fences and features an icy aside by Willis that could rival Michael Bivins at his most poisonous.
Although the Bizzie Boyz were all the buzz around Carolina food courts, “Droppin’ It” was in heavy rotation on New York City’s WBLS-Kiss FM, thanks to staff DJs Chuck Chill Out and Marley Marl. Willis used this momentum to embark on a big-city rap career in New York City. Within a few years, Willski would drop the “Will” from his rap nom de plume, becoming known simply as Ski. If that name sounds familiar, it’s because the flattopped mastermind behind this Carolina classic would go on to produce crucial cuts for Jay-Z’s Reasonable Doubt and Camp Lo’s Uptown Saturday Night among others.