Hip hop skit

A hip hop skit is a form of sketch comedy that appears on a hip hop album or mixtape, and is usually written and performed by the artists themselves. Skits can appear on albums or mixtapes as individual tracks, or at the beginning or end of a song. Some skits are part of concept albums and contribute to an album's concept. Skits also occasionally appear on albums of other genres.

The hip-hop skit was more or less pioneered by De La Soul and their producer Prince Paul who incorporated many skits on their 1989 debut album 3 Feet High and Rising,[1] however an even earlier example may be found at the end of the Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five hit, The Message.

The Hip Hop Skit although dominant throughout the 90s and the early 2000s began to be phased out in the later half of the 2000s and the early 2010s.[1] Reasons for this include the popularity of MP3.[1]

Writing for The AV Club, Evan Rytlewski opined that skits may have originally been in vogue because an expanded track listing would look more appealing to would be buyers, although he noted that their first inclusion on a De La Soul record was most likely just them being "eccentric".[1]

Some skits by certain artists have the same theme throughout. For example, Eminem regularly has conversations with his manager Paul Rosenberg or plays the character Ken Kaniff. Royce da 5'9 uses skits to give background and context to his storytelling raps, like on Book of Ryan. La Toya Jackson uses skits to show her fancy lifestyle in her album Starting Over. Hip hop and trip hop French producer Wax Tailor also uses skits on each album, mixing beats with 50's movies cuts.