It’s a Tuesday afternoon like any other, except that Pablo Skywalkin is throwing a pizza party. At the Lower East Side location of Cuts & Slices, a pizzeria that got famous for toppings that are as funky and absurd as Pablo’s eccentric spin on Detroit street rap, he’s cheffing up the restaurant’s signature oxtail pie. (Slice review: Flavorful, but the blasphemous mix of cheese and oxtail gravy had me slumped after a few bites.) Wearing a hairnet over his freshly done braids, Pablo’s cameraman shoots the lesson, while the rapper talks through the steps with his fast-talking charisma and herky-jerky Eddie Murphy chuckles. As that’s going down, stylists from the popular streetwear brand Denim Tears rush in and out every few minutes to change the outfit of the 6’5″ stringbean like he’s on the runway and not in a hot, busy kitchen. Life as a viral rapper is pretty random.
Last year, after more than a decade of ups and downs in the nonstop Detroit rap scene, Pablo Skywalkin was reborn on the internet. All of a sudden, my TikTok and Instagram feeds were flooded with clips—filmed in aisles of bookstores and department stores—of Pablo standing like a third grader presenting his book report as he dropped nuggets of wisdom (“Niggas wit’ no future got the most hoes”) and Hallmark game (“You are so pretty, just like the sunset”), dressed like a designer Urkel or a fly missionary in The Book of Mormon. Sometimes it felt like these videos tried too hard to be or start memes.
“Is it strange for you that there are fans out there more interested in your social media presence than your music?” I ask him in the pizza spot.
He looks me dead in my eyes, places his hand on my shoulder like a pee-wee football coach, and responds, “No. Because it’s still me. All these rappers burnt out; all these rappers the big bad wolf; I’m authentic no matter what.”
He used the attention from his viral clips to push goofball track snippets. The music, much of which landed on his April mixtape, Trapper Flow, merged the wisecracking punchline rap that had been his go-to style since he was a teenager with based flows and Milwaukee lowend-inspired twerk beats.
I might have considered Pablo’s adoption of the lowend sound waveriding if the upbeat party music didn’t fit him better than the too-small suits he likes to wear. The switch-up unleashed his knack for madcap storytelling and silly shit-talk. “In Detroit, we just shit-talkers; that’s how we bond with you,” he told me earlier in the day, outside of the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, the main branch of the New York Public Library system. “Growing up, crackin’ hella jokes is how we say I love you; we talk shit then give a hug.”
