Tuesday, August 30th – I had the pleasure of meeting one half of Dallas based production duo and real-life brothers Play N Skillz at a private dinner in their honor at Sofrito’s in East Harlem.
Overlooking the most beautiful view of the Hudson River and the GW Bridge while sitting at a table full of other journalists and influencers, I stole a few questions with older brother Juan “Play” Salinas. The 2-time Grammy Award winners are very busy these days branching out from their classic Texas Hip Hop program to EDM, Latin music, expanding their artistry sides as rappers/performers, and their branding consulting company. Since hitting it big in 2003, Play N Skillz have worked with the likes of Lil Wayne, David Guetta, Akon, Pitbull, Wynter Gordon, Ludacris to name a few – and so I hear, the best is yet to come.
Explain your transition from Texas Hip Hop to EDM.
I’m always going to love Texas-Hip Hop – that’s our heart, it’s our root but you have to evolve as an artist, and you want to be able to do different things. We were able to slide into the EDM side because we are DJ’s before anything, and I DJ’d House music before I even DJ’d Hip Hop. A lot of EDM guys want to do urban music, and because I understand the urban culture, I have become one of those guys who comes in the middle. You’d be surprised how the songwriting in EDM can be not as cool without the slang that is used in urban music, so they’ll lean on urban producers, urban writers, and that’s where I kind of found my place with doing that.
And then you know, I’ve gotten the opportunity to travel as our brand grew; went to Mexico on tour, Australia, went to Dubai and figured out that there are all kinds of different people in the world, different sounds; there’s over 7 billion people in the world, why am I only marketing to Dallas and Houston, Texas. There’s more opportunity and we wanted to rebrand and evolve as musicians and as people.
How did you Play N Skillz get their start?
We started in high school, Seniors (me) and Juniors (Skillz), we are blood brothers. We started throwing parties, DJing, late 90s, early 2000s, and got our break with the whole Texas thing, starting with Lil Flip, and that so many more doors. It’s coming on, we’ve been in the business successfully for about 12-13 years – that’s a long time, we are blessed. Especially for two latin kids from Texas doing urban, traditional black music, now EDM, now Latin and to be accepted in all those things, it really just became about the music and nothing else.
Outside of your production and producing other artists, what can we expect from you guys as performers?
We always perform our records, I hate to say ‘rap our records’ (laughs), I’m no Eminem or one of those great MCs. I know how to make a song. We are also working on a producer-DJ album that is leaning a little more Latin. This project, we’re collaborating with the Daddy Yankee’s, and all the upcoming latin stuff but I’m doing with a backdrop of trapbeats (or global sounding beats) its bilingual, a little Spanish, a little English.
We did a deal at Sony Latin, a major partnership. Recently put out a single with Daddy Yankee called “Not a Crime”, and it did very well for us over streaming, very well for me. It feels like it’s a new life for us, the award shows are different. The doors have really been opening for us. The latin world is a whole different world that we are tapping into, different audience, different fan base, it’s almost like starting over, it’s a cool challenge for us.
Anything you can share about this Secret Project with Mannie Fresh?
Mannie Fresh and us have been friends for years, Mannie produced with us and worked with us, and Wayne of course, we did “Got Money”. I saw Fresh at an event in Los Angeles and was like ‘yo, when are gonna do something again,’ and he was like, “I’m waiting on you guys.” And then he told us about this EDM project that he was working on with Wayne, and was thinking to collaborate with someone. He said he knew we had the formula down with him already and that ‘we should do it together’, and the next week we got on the phone, and it all came together.
It’s going to be really cool man, I mean anything with Lil Wayne & Mannie Fresh is off the top, #1- amazing. But I think we are adding a whole different flavor to it with Plan n Skillz, with the EDM, the drops, its going to be interesting – not the classic Mannie Fresh, a complete different sound. Fresh has always been an inspiration to us, I don’t think he gets all the credit he deserves as a music producer.
Tell us about your mixtape Hip Hop mixtape getting ready to come out.
Yes, TrapHard Texas, its back to our roots. You know, we are over here doing Miami, FL Latin events in full Spanish, but my heart and soul is in my Texas Hip Hop. So we wanted to put out a project with mainly all the Texas artists that we are working with, Slim Thug, Paul Wall, Mike Jones, and bunch of others, that classic Texas sound that broke years ago. I want to bring it back, I feel like it got lost or something. We are like 6-7 songs in, and a few more to go.
Tell us about new artist, Superstar Guess and working with him on his single “Abracadabra” ft. Baby Bash.
He’s actually a friend of mine who came to me about producing some records for him, and I helped him to get in touch with Baby Bash and kind of guided him. Another thing, my brother and I have a consulting company, a building and branding company for artists who have budgets or are serious about being rappers, producers, entertainers as a whole. We are guiding them because nobody told us when we were coming up how to do what we are doing. You know, “don’t put your money there, put it here,” etc. People think they can just move to LA or something and it’s just going to happen. Where are you going to start – these are questions I wish we knew off hand at the beginning.