Lance Skiiiwalker

 

I’ve always wanted to be from Chicago.

I know that sounds ridiculous coming from someone born in San Antonio, raised through a very Texas lens, and now somehow building a life between San Francisco, Japan, music, AI, comics, and whatever other strange side quest I’ve convinced myself is normal.

But it’s true.

Chicago has always felt like the best city in the world to me. Maybe not the easiest. Maybe not the warmest, literally or emotionally. But the best. The sports lore alone is enough to get me going. Jordan. The Bulls. Wrigley. The Bears somehow being both iconic and eternally stressful. Then you add the music, the neighborhoods, the architecture, the food, the history, the attitude, the very specific feeling that the city has its own gravitational pull. And of course all the homies.

I was lucky enough to live there for a few years in my twenties, but even before that, I had already built a whole imaginary relationship with Chicago through music.

I was born in ’94 and got into hip hop around ’03. Stones Throw, Madlib, MF DOOM, J Dilla, all of that became foundational for me. I had an older cousin who let me take albums from her, which was probably one of the most important musical gifts I could have received as a kid. I didn’t know it then, but those records shaped my ear forever.

Thanks to the internet and, let’s be honest, pirating, I had a pretty deep bag as a youngster. There wasn’t really anything around me in San Antonio that felt like “my scene,” so I had to go find one somewhere else. Or really, a bunch of them.

DatPiff. Blogs. YouTube. Message boards. Later, Majestic Casual. SoundCloud. Bandcamp. Random .zip files with broken track names. Mixtapes downloaded from websites that crashed the family PC.

This was the real education.

And for my generation, three waves really come to mind as the ones I was tapped into early:

LA beat scene / Odd Future.

Pro Era in New York.

Chicago’s SaveMoney orbit.

The first two kind of speak for themselves. Odd Future felt like someone kicked a hole in the wall and a bunch of kids came running through it. Pro Era felt like teenagers rediscovering golden age rap and making it feel new again.

But Chicago was my favorite.

At this point, circa 2010 to 2012, Kanye was already king. Not “famous rapper” king. I mean “changed the entire shape of hip hop” king. Drill was also starting to explode into the mainstream, changing the sound, language, and image of rap in a completely different way.

And yet, the Chicago artists I kept gravitating toward were Chance the Rapper, Vic Mensa, Mick Jenkins, Towkio, Joey Purp, Kids These Days, and all the different branches around that world.

They felt like my generation’s continuation of Common, Kanye, and Lupe. Maybe that’s too clean of a sentence, but that’s how it felt to me at the time. Soulful, sharp, colorful, weird, hyper-local, funny, emotional, and ambitious.

Also, they were my age.

That shit mattered.

There is something different about watching artists who are not that much older than you start to build their own mythology in real time. It makes the whole thing feel possible. Not easy, obviously. But possible.

Somewhere in that Chicago internet rabbit hole, I remember hearing about The Rocketeers.

At the time, I didn’t fully understand who or what that was. I just knew it was floating around the same general atmosphere I was obsessed with. The name stuck in my head, but I didn’t connect all the dots yet. I definitely didn’t know that years later, one of those dots would become Lance Skiiiwalker.

Funny how the internet works. You find something when you’re young, file it away in some random corner of your brain, then a decade later it comes back wearing a different outfit.

 

A Quick History Lesson, But Really Just Me Being a Fan

Around the same time I was following the Chicago scene, Kendrick was becoming Kendrick.

I remember hearing “The Heart Part 2” and feeling like something had shifted. Not in the corny “rap will never be the same” way people say when they want to sound important. I mean I genuinely remember hearing him rap like that and thinking, oh, this is different.

He wasn’t just nice.

He sounded possessed. Like I was seeing a dude’s gift come straight out of his soul.

From there, I went all in on TDE.

Kendrick, obviously. But then Ab-Soul became one of my favorites. Q had that wild charisma. Jay Rock was the foundation. SZA came in and opened up an entirely different emotional universe. Isaiah Rashad felt like someone making music specifically for long walks, bad decisions, and being 22 with too many feelings. (he is my fav to this day)

 

TDE felt like a roster, yes, but more than that, it felt like a world.

Everybody sounded different, but somehow they all made sense together.

So imagine being me in 2016. I’m graduating college. Kendrick is reaaaalllly the guy now. TDE is on top of the world. The roster feels untouchable. And then they announce a new signee:

Lance Skiiiwalker.

My mind was blown.

Not because I knew everything about him. Actually, the opposite. I knew fragments.

I remembered The Rocketeers. I remembered the Chicago connection. I remembered hearing ScHoolboy Q’s “His & Her Fiend” and wondering who the hell that voice was on the hook. SZA was obvious. But there was this other presence on the song that felt smoky, ghostly, strange.

So I started digging.

Who is that?

Lo and behold, it was Lance.

That is the thing with Lance. At least for me. I didn’t discover him in one clean moment. He showed up in pieces. A name. A voice. A credit. A Chicago connection. A TDE announcement. A song that stayed with me longer than I expected it to.

Then Introverted Intuition dropped.

And again, my mind was blown.

Not because it was the easiest album in the world to explain. It wasn’t. It still isn’t. That’s part of why I like it. It sounded like someone was given the keys to a studio and decided to make the weirdest, most internal, most smoked-out thing possible.

Respect.

The album came out in October 2016 through TDE, after Lance had officially signed with the label earlier that year. Publicly, his story had already moved through Chicago, The Rocketeers, work with TDE artists, and then into his own solo debut.

But for me, the story was simpler:

I had been following the smoke trail for years without realizing where it was coming from.

And now here he was.

From the Outside Looking In

The funny thing about writing this profile is that I don’t want to pretend I know every detail of Lance’s early life yet.

We haven’t done the full interview and we might not get to it in time. I don’t want to invent some grand origin story out of thin air, like:

“Born under a purple moon on the South Side of Chicago, Lance first heard a kick drum and knew destiny had arrived.”

I refuse.

What I can say is that Lance’s music sounds like it comes from someone who didn’t enter creativity through one door.

Some artists are easy to categorize. Lance is not one of them. And I mean that as a compliment.

Singer? Sure.

Producer? Definitely.

Rapper? Sometimes.

Composer? Yes.

Weirdo? Absolutely.

His music has R&B in it, but it’s not just R&B. It has hip hop in it, but it’s not really rap. It has funk, jazz, soul, psychedelia, soundtrack music, and whatever genre you would use to describe someone making beats in a kitchen at 3 a.m. while watching old films with the sound off (RIP Mac).

The point is not genre.

The point is atmosphere.

That’s always been what I liked about Lance. His music feels like a room. Sometimes dimly lit. Sometimes funny. Sometimes uncomfortable. Sometimes beautiful. Sometimes you’re not sure if you were supposed to be invited in there.

But you’re there now, so you might as well look around.

After we interview, I want this section to get more personal. I want to know what he heard growing up. What records mattered. What made him want to be an artist. What made him think, “Yeah, I’m actually going to do this.”

But even before that conversation, the thing that comes through in his work is clear:

Lance sounds like someone who trusted his own weirdness before everyone else had a clean way to explain it.

That’s rare.

Signing to TDE Is Crazy, I Don’t Care How Normal People Try to Make It Sound

Let’s just say the obvious thing.

Signing to TDE in 2016 is insane.

Like, actually insane.

This was not just joining a label. This was joining one of the most important creative ecosystems in music. Kendrick was in full deity mode. Q was Q. Soul was Soul. SZA was becoming SZA. Isaiah had already given us Cilvia Demo and was right there. Jay Rock was the backbone. The whole thing felt mythological.

So for Lance to come into that world made perfect sense and no sense at the same time.

Perfect sense because TDE has always had room for left turns. They understood texture. They understood identity. They understood that not every artist needs to move the same way.

No sense because Lance was not some obvious commercial play. He wasn’t a traditional rapper. He wasn’t a straightforward R&B act. He was something else. A secret weapon. A studio gremlin. A melodic alien. A guy whose voice could appear on a song and suddenly make the whole thing feel like it was melting a little.

That’s a very specific skill.

And for me, that was the exciting part.

I love artists who don’t fully explain themselves on first listen. I love artists where you have to sit with the work for a while. Lance’s music has always had that quality. It doesn’t run up to you asking to be liked. It kind of stands in the corner, says something strange, and waits to see if you’re paying attention.

I respect that deeply.

 

Also, “All Stops” is still my plane song. 

I don’t know when that started, but every time I get on a plane, I play it. Something about that song feels like being between places. Leaving somewhere. Going somewhere. Not fully belonging to either one for a few hours.

That’s Lance to me.

In motion, but interior.

The Work

Lance’s catalog is not a straight line.

Good.

Straight lines are boring.

Introverted Intuition is the beginning of the solo Lance world in a public-facing way. It’s strange, hazy, funny, inward, and experimental. It doesn’t feel like an artist trying to please everyone. It feels like an artist trying to make the inside of his head audible.

Then there are the Tales From the Telescope projects, Chapter 1: Rebirth and Chapter 2: Internal Shine, both released in 2021. Even the titles feel like Lance titles. Rebirth. 

Internal Shine. Telescope. This man is not naming projects like “Summer Pack Vol. 2.” He is clearly on another frequency.

Then there’s Audiodidactic, released in 2023. Great title. Truly a great title. Self-taught through sound. Learning by listening. Making the ear the classroom. That feels like a real thesis for Lance as an artist. 

And then beyond the albums, there’s the larger creative world. Production. Scoring. Film work. Experiments. Collaborations. The things that don’t always show up neatly on a discography but absolutely shape the artist.

That’s the lane where Lance makes the most sense to me.

He’s not just a “song” guy.

He’s a world guy.

His music feels visual. You can see the rooms. You can see the smoke. You can see the old TV light. You can see the car ride. You can see someone sitting alone after everyone else left. That’s why film and scoring make sense. He already makes music that behaves like scenes.

And I think that’s part of why we connected creatively.

Because I don’t really want to just make “content.” I want to build worlds. Lance gets that.

 

AI, Neutone, and the Weird Tool Conversation

I work in AI, which means I spend a lot of my life trying to explain that I am both excited by and deeply suspicious of AI.

That split can be exhausting. One half of me believes deeply in the possibilities. The other half is constantly worried about what happens when the people building the tools forget that art comes from people first.

The AI conversation in music can get annoying fast because it usually collapses into the least interesting version of itself.

Can AI make a song?

Can AI make a beat?

Can AI sound like this person?

Can AI replace that person?

Can AI generate 9,000 fake lo-fi tracks and ruin everyone’s day? 

Yes. Unfortunately. We’re already there in a lot of ways.

But that’s not the conversation I care about.

The conversation I care about is: what happens when real artists get access to strange tools that help them hear differently?

That’s where Neutone comes in. And that’s where Lance makes so much sense.

Lance is already experimental. He already treats voice like texture. He already treats production like world-building. He already lives in the space between song, score, sketch, joke, dream, and late-night studio accident.

So giving someone like Lance access to AI tools doesn’t feel like handing a calculator to someone who doesn’t want to do math. It feels more like putting another weird pedal on the floor and saying, “I don’t know, see what happens.”

That’s the good version of this.

Not AI replacing artists.

Not companies scraping everyone’s work and pretending that’s innovation.

Not soulless content sludge.

But artists using AI with agency, consent, and taste.

Taste is the key word here. Tools don’t save you from having bad taste. In fact, new tools usually reveal your taste even faster. If you’re boring, AI will probably just help you be boring faster. Sorry.

But if you’re Lance, the tool becomes interesting because his instincts are interesting.

We’ve already done a little collaboration through Neutone, and I think there’s more there. Not because AI is the point. AI is not the point. The artist is the point. The tool should serve the person, not the other way around.

That’s the hill I’ll die on.

And with Lance, I’m excited because he is exactly the kind of artist who can take something new, strange, and potentially chaotic, then make it feel human.

The Future, AKA the Real Reason This One Feels Different

This is where the profile changes for me.

Because normally, when I write one of these, I’m writing about an artist I admire. Maybe I’ve gotten to know them a little. Maybe we’ve talked a handful of itmes. Maybe there’s a connection; that’s always special.

But this one is different.

Lance is the homie. 

And not in the fake industry way where everyone is “bro” and “family” until the invoice arrives.

I mean actually the homie.

We’ve started a production company together. We’re working on a movie. We’re starting a music label. We’re releasing a graphic novel. We are, in the simplest terms, trying to build a whole thing.

I don’t even totally know what to call it yet.

A company? Sure.

A creative partnership? Yes.

A world? Hopefully.

A long-term excuse to keep making weird shit with people we trust? Duh.

That’s the dream, really.

The older I get, the more I realize that the best creative work usually comes from real relationships. Not networking. Not “let’s connect soon.” Not LinkedIn energy. God forbid.

Real relationships.

People you can talk to honestly. People you can send half-baked ideas to. People who understand when something is stupid in the right way. People who know when to push and when to let the thing breathe. People who are not just chasing the next move, but trying to build something that can actually last.

That’s what this feels like with Lance.

The movie is one piece.

The label is one piece.

The graphic novel is one piece.

The music is the thread through all of it.

That’s important. Because for both of us, music is not just the soundtrack. Music is the architecture. It tells you how a world moves. It tells you what a character remembers. It tells you what kind of room you’re in before anyone says a word.

I think that’s why this partnership makes sense.

Lance already thinks cinematically. I already think about music as the thing underneath everything. So whether we’re talking about a film, a comic, an album, or whatever else comes next, the question is always the same:

What does this world sound like?

That’s the part that excites me.

And honestly, that’s the part that makes this whole story feel full circle in a way I still find kind of crazy.

I started as a kid in San Antonio, digging through blogs and Limewire, trying to understand scenes I wasn’t physically part of.

I followed Chicago from a distance.

I followed TDE from a distance.

I heard Lance’s voice before I knew his story.

I remembered The Rocketeers before I knew what that memory would mean later.

Now Lance and I are friends, and we’re building together.

Life is very weird.

Sometimes in a good way.

The Beginning, Not the End

There are artists who make sense immediately.

Lance is not one of them.

Again, compliment.

He’s the kind of artist you circle back to. The kind of artist who makes more sense the more you understand the rooms he’s been in, the scenes he came from, the sounds he’s absorbed, and the future he’s trying to build.

For years, Lance was a mystery to me. A voice on a hook. A name connected to Chicago. A TDE signee who felt like he came from a different hallway than everyone else. An artist whose music I played on planes because it made the space between places feel a little more cinematic.

Now he’s my friend.

And now we’re building something.

That’s rare.

I don’t take it lightly.

So this profile isn’t really a conclusion. It’s more like a marker. A little flag in the ground before the next chapter starts.

I heard the music first.

Then I met the person.

Now we get to build the world.

—o—

Lance has a lot going on rn. He’s making a movie, starting a record label and gearing up for the release of his 3rd studio album. Follow along below:

• Instagram

• Spotify

• Bandcamp

• Label page