skyyHiRY

Ryan Richards, better known as skyyHiRY (pronounced sky-high-R-Y), is an American rapper/ producer born and raised in Manassas, Virginia. Born June 22, 1990 he was born a statistic. With a single mother barely out of her teens and no male role model, the only child was bought up to teach himself. At the tender age of 7, Richards would be introduced to a world that would change his life forever….
Despite being young in age, he made up for with a musical ear crossing over in all genres. Quickly finding the need to make his own records he got to work on building a home project studio and learned to record and mix on a 4-track analog recorder. Understanding the music’s past to appreciate the future. At 13, after watching Kanye West’s “Through The Wire” and after a close friend introducing him to a music software program, Ryan began sampling music. This paved way for a whole new sound for Richards, which was even more enticing than ever before. At 15 he released his first mixtape entitled “Sounds Of..” passing copies around in school and wherever he could. Negative and positive feedback followed, this fueled the rapper/ producer even more. Graduating high school he bought into the fad of “attending college as the only way to make a future.” He enrolled at Strayer University in Fall 2009’ majoring in Business Administration and began working on his first self-produced project entitled “Flyy Timez @ Coolin Hi” Having influences from Curren$y, Common, Project Pat, Ludacris, Kanye West and his favorite rapper of all time Tupac Shakur. From 2009-2011 Richards finished the project, and titled it under a different name. On June 22, 2012 the rapper released “Champain” a 12-track project completely produced by skyyHiRY. The mixtape consists of melodic, odd samples with up-lifting, catchy lyrical meanings and in-depth songs that exploited the young rappers growth as well as experience.
Between R-Y’s 2009-2012 “Flyy Timez @ Coolin Hi” period, Richards helped formed the movement which he still is a part of properly titled “Fa$tLife.” He also released two EP’s with fellow Fa$tLife Member Bucky Malone, to create what they would call the epic “Spur” series. “Spur” came about while in the studio working on Bucky Malone’s “Purple Thunder Adventures.” The duo decided to write, produce, and record as much music as possible within one night. And that they did, “Spur” consists of 5-tracks, 4 produced by skyyHiRY, with the same formula they’ve applied to Malone’s project, the two released “Spur” on September 28, 2011. “Spur II” was released a month later on October 30, 2011. This time ALL of 6-tracks were produced by skyyHiRY, once again proving not only his producing capabilities but as well as his lyrics. “Spur III” was recently released on October 7, 2012 with all 5-tracks produced by, yet again, skyyHiRY. “NEW YEARS DAY” would mark a slightly different R-Y. This would serve as the rapper’s 2nd mixtape/ ep. With only 6-tracks Richards’ opted to keep this short but complex as far as each track’s distinctiveness. As a whole the ep has been accepted as what Richards’ says “there’s a song for everyone on there.” Again, skyyHiRY produced all of the ep’s tracks.
Although young, yet bold, skyyHiRY considers himself to be quite brilliant. With superior lyrics about struggle, relationships, wealth, poverty, police brutality, racism, and how to survive all of this, you can look at everything about the rapper and use it as motivation or inspiration to surpass.
“I want my life and my career to serve as inspiration. The whole meaning of skyyHiRY, is to live life to the fullest, not to the limit but to live, work and dream higher than the skyy.” - skyyHiRY