Mario Farrow, aka SkyBlew, is one of the Triangle’s brightest rising hip-hop stars with a style all his own. The Chapel Hill rhyme spitter’s story started in Alabama where he grew up bouncing from foster home to foster home and surrounded by inner city violence. He used this strife to create a space for himself via rap lyricism that would help him rise above the turbulence mentally and physically. Drawing inspiration from cartoons like “Rocco’s Modern Life” and “Dragon Ball Z,” his music is inspirationally positive, and never glorifies the horrors of street violence.
To classify SkyBlew as “nerd-core” is the kind of box he doesn’t want people to put him in. His rhymes aren’t all nerd all the time, there’s more depth, more soul. Recently he started playing live with a jazz accompaniment that brings his whole brand together, so to watch him perform is almost like a mix of The Roots and De La Soul.
Featured by notable media outlets like MTV, HYPERFRESH, DJ Booth Magazine, 2DOPEBOYZ, and Afropunk, SkyBlew is on his way up and ready to stake his claim in a hip-hop environment that’s beginning to turn its head toward North Carolina. Recently he did a regional tour of the Southeast with video game rapper Mega Ran, and released an exceptional EP with Scottie Royal entitled The Royal Blew Reverie that is sure to keep the heads ringing well into 2016.
– Charles Morse, WKNC Underground Music Director
See SkyBlew on Night 2 of this year’s Double Barrel Benefit!