Life has plenty of twists and turns, which Skinnyfromthe9 knows all too well. The young, energetic rapper hailing from Florida and coming of age in New Jersey has had quite a few wild experiences in his 23 years, including parents who were running from the law and eventually got locked up, and his own incarceration for allegedly kidnapping a man last year.

After finding his way to New Jersey, Skinny blossomed into a notable rapper, racking up millions of views on YouTube for songs like "Love Blast" and streams on DSPs. His music combines lyrics both jovial and the intensely personal. Listen to his 2018 project, It's an Evil World, to get more familiar.

Now Skinny opens up about his rise in the game, rappers who influenced him on the come up, misconceptions about him and much more in the latest episode of XXL's Who Am I?

In the start of the conversation, Skinny breaks down his childhood a bit. "I was originally born in Hialeah, Fla.," he shares. His biological father was in jail, so his mother married another man, Skinny's stepfather. "They had six more kids, so I come from a family of seven," Skinny says. They moved around a lot, because they were into a lot of illegal stuff, a lot of scamming and stuff like that, so I lived everywhere."

This kind of constant moving around was likely tough on Skinny and his siblings. He eventually settled down in Somerville, N.J, when he was 12, with his biological father who was freed from jail at the time. This move triggered his rap career, with his father supporting him how he could, getting him a laptop so he could record.

During the more unstable part of Skinny's early life, he turned to the music of a rapper who resides on a lot of rap fans' hip-hop Mt. Rushmore. "During that whole horrible time in my life, I was strictly a Eminem fan, I didn't wanna listen to nobody else," Skinny explains. "Eminem was just the greatest person in the world. I got older and I started going to school, and I started hearing shit like, there is other good music, its not just Eminem." He then shows his love for two celebrated Pennsylvania rappers. "That's when Mac Miller was poppin'. I loved Mac Miller and Meek Mill. That first Dreamchasers mixtape? That shit is a classic, that I fucked with heavy."

Skinny also keeps it real about how some people have the wrong idea about him. "I'm not a mumble rapper; I make good music. I'm not stupid; can you tell from this conversation? I know how to talk," he states. He's also not allowing anyone to pin him as someone with a drug problem. "They probably think I do mad drugs, like I'm Xan'd out, like I'm just some drug addict. No."

Check out the rest of Skinny's interview in which he discusses signing to L.A. Reid's Hitco Entertainment, record labels in his DMs, his first makeshift studio and much more up top.

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