Previously unreleased bars from the sorely missed MC legend Skibadee can be heard on a new posthumous release this month – Decapitate with AC MC, Spookasonic and Ego Trippin. All proceeds will go to Skibadee’s children.

A heavyweight lockdown link-up, Decapitate features the harder side of Skiba on the fierce staccato offensive. Leading from the front, his bars define the character and focus of tune and remind us that while he was renowned and loved for being one of the friendliest and warmest hearted artists in the game, he’d never have the piss taken out of him.

“He did the hook and a verse and sent it to me and Ego for our opinions,” explains AC. “He said he was playing around with a new flow pattern and I thought it worked really well on the tune so I said, ‘I’ll do my verse in the same pattern, and do backup vocals on the hook.”

Like all the best collaborations, Decapitate then took a life of its own and Spookasonic, who’s collaborated with Ego Trippin in the past, came on board. “Skiba and me both highly rated Spooka so I suggested him and Skiba agreed,” AC recalls. “So I sent it to Spookz and he loved it too and laced the third verse.”

Decapitate comes complete with a video that also features unreleased footage of Skibadee. It’s been edited in such a way it feels as if he’s rapping to the track.

“After Skiba passed away I wanted to release it as a tribute and a way to raise some money for his kids so I contacted his daughter Asia and Skylar’s mother Cheree about doing this. They both gave their blessing for it to be released so we filmed a video in Kings Cross and put Bagleys warehouse in it to pay tribute to all the nights we saw Skiba tear it up there.”

“I was going to edit the video and release in May but then my mum passed away suddenly on the 11th so I had to take a break from music for a bit.  In August I began editing it, and used loads of old footage I had of events that Skiba and I were at for his verse and the mad thing is a lot of the clips of him look like he’s actually spitting the bars of our track! I didn’t even have to adjust them they just fit straight away!”

Decapitate is the second posthumous release from Skibadee. It follows Every Time That I Land, a collaboration with Gardna which dropped in December 2022. Like Decapitate, all money raised went to Skibadee’s family.

“For me and Spooka, Skiba was the MC we rated the most from our teens and he inspired us to want to MC,” says AC. “I remember hearing him on a rave tape in school and was amazed at his flow, clarity and rhyming patterns that he could pull off at such speed. Then I met him in raves and he was nice to me, even bought me a coffee in Andorra when I was broke and also let me have his hotel room when he left an event early and the promoter had messed me around and not got me a room. He was our hero in this MC thing and was so to be able to do a tune with him was a dream come true, and to get to release it now after all that’s happened and hopefully do some good for his kids with it, is an honour for us.”

“Skiba was like a father figure to me in the sense I grew up on his words and his sets,” agrees Spookasonic. “I listened to everything he said. I studied everything he did and used it as inspiration for my own style and flow. I learned from the best. Once I was old enough to go to raves I noticed he didn’t need to say a word before the crowd went mad and that to me was like magic because no other MC had that particular talent at that time. My dream from when I was 11 was to do a set or even better a tune with Skiba and the universe granted my wishes and for that I’m forever grateful. Even better, the proceeds of the song go to his children.”

Support Decapitate here

For more tributes to Skibadee read: Remembering Skibadee