MARK SKILLZ: UNLIMITED

I know I'm building a rep as an old school hip hop historian and writer and that's cool, but that's not all I'm trying to be. A while back my friend and colleague Ronin Ro told me how he no longer wanted to just be known as a 'hip hop writer'. He told me "Hey man, with your talent, I can see you too, not just writing about hip hop but about anything." And he's right.

I don't want to be pigeon-holed into this one little box called hip-hop. There are other subjects that interest me as well. There are dozens and dozens of stories I'd like to write: Like about the Dinner Time Bandits: a couple of guys who, for 40 years were the top cat burglars in the country; Frank Matthews: one of the biggest drug dealers of the early 70's, that was until the Feds cracked down on him and he was either killed by the Mob or he jumped bail; Iceberg Slim: the man that put the pimp game on paper; Nat Turner: I hate reading books about slavery that talk about us getting our asses whupped by massa, I wanna tell the story of the brother that fought back!"

I have always spoken out about how we as a people are not a monolithic being, that speaks with one mouth and one brain. Hell no, we have a vast ocean of experiences to tap into.