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Madeleine Fitzpatrick

Production editor, Specialist Publications and China desks


The last time I sat down with Lucas “Skibs the Kid” Scibetta, in the summer of 2013, he was an 18-year-old, backwards-baseball-cap-wearing rapper and fresh Hong Kong International School graduate, still riding high on the success of his viral 2012 hit, “Hong Kong Kids”.
His G.O.D. clothing line had just launched, and his local notoriety was such that in December, he would open for Pharrell Williams at the inaugural Blohk Party music festival in West Kowloon.
Our catch-up nearly 13 years later takes place over the recent Easter weekend. Scibetta, now a mature student at New York’s Columbia University, is on the cusp of turning 31.
He talks over video call from his flat near the Ivy League university, where he is carrying a GPA over 4.0 (A-grade). His physical transformation is striking.
He wears glasses with retro-looking frames, he has a goatee, his hair is shoulder length and his trucker hat now faces forwards. “Skibs the man,” I say incredulously, and he chuckles. Behind him on the wall hang two prints by Jean-Michel Basquiat: another New Yorker who grew up between worlds.
Before we talk about what he is up to now, I want to know when Scibetta last listened to “Hong Kong Kids”, that paean to his hometown from the age of 12 – and how it made him feel.
“It’s been a minute,” he smiles. “Every once in a while though, I come back to it. It captured a youthful moment, and youth is precious – and it reminds me that I fully lived my youth, which I think is why I’m kind of chillin’ now at 30.”

By chilling, he partly means leading a sober lifestyle: he stopped smoking a decade ago, and has not had a drink in six years. The precocious, irrepressible teen has matured into a quiet, thoughtful adult.
From community college to Columbia
It is arguably hard to fathom why Scibetta departed Hong Kong just one year after opening for Pharrell, when he was riding about as high as any young musician could.
He initially enrolled at Loyola University in New Orleans for its “strong music industry programme”, but having made connections in New York – his birthplace and where he lived between the ages of six and 12 – he was inspired to quit and pursue music full time. He chose to go from being a big fish in a small pond to a minnow in the maximally competitive shark tank of New York City.
He finds it ironic that, having dropped out to move to New York, the city ended up being the place where his education blossomed.
“The music industry is tough,” he admits. “After a few years in New York without much stability, I realised I needed to create more options for myself. That’s what led me to enrol in community college, which eventually put me on the path to Columbia.”
He was 21 when he entered community college, the institution in question being at “the lowest tier in New York – it had, like, a 97 per cent acceptance rate”, he says.
“In high school, I didn’t do anything but music. I had no background of grades,” he explains. It was not until an adviser at the college told Scibetta about a programme at Columbia that required a 3.8 GPA that he became motivated to improve his grades.
He started getting straight As, transferred to Fordham – “a middle-tier school in New York” – got straight As there too, applied to Columbia, got rejected and kept applying until the School of General Studies finally said yes. “I just wanted to get into this programme,” he says.
The course he was so set on was financial economics; the School of General Studies, Columbia’s college for non-traditional students, comprises many working professionals who have taken an unorthodox path to higher education.
Scibetta appreciates being able to study part time because he indeed remains a working professional. He is about to drop his latest album, in English and Japanese, titled Hong Kong God II: The Way of Zen. He is also launching a clothing line and writing a book.

‘You have an Asian vibe to you’
Surprisingly, to those of us who associate Scibetta with Hong Kong, Tokyo is the first home he knew – his family moved there from New York when he was just six months old.
His parents enrolled him in a Japanese kindergarten with local children, and he was soon as comfortable speaking Japanese as English.
“My kindergarten teacher would translate what my mom said in English to me,” he says, laughing, “because she thought I didn’t speak English.”
When the family relocated to London four years later, Scibetta was sent to a Japanese school there as well. “I was the only Caucasian in the whole school; the only American,” he says.
When he was six and a half, his family moved back to New York, bringing his Japanese immersion to a screeching halt.
He lost the ability to speak Japanese for a time, but the deep cultural programming of his earliest years remains to this day. “Oh my gosh, every time I turn in a test [at Columbia], I like bow and s***,” he says, laughing.
He began taking Japanese classes at Columbia – and they unlocked something.
“Multilingual music really interests me, just because of how I grew up – but it wasn’t until I studied at Columbia that I got a grasp on the language enough to record stuff in Japanese,” he says.

Inspired, Scibetta spent two weeks writing and memorising songs in Japanese, before recording seven tracks in a single session.
“It’s a very nostalgic language for me,” he says. “Using it creatively feels like a way of reconnecting with that part of my life.”
Bowing aside, do people in the West ever notice there is something different about him?
“I had a teacher from Taiwan at community college,” he says. “She was like, ‘You have an Asian vibe to you.’”
An East-West cultural collision
After Scibetta dropped out of music college in New Orleans, the first thing he did was take a job busing tables at an Italian restaurant in upstate New York.
“The first couple of years back in the States were kind of tricky,” he admits.
In 2021, he released Hong Kong God, a sprawling 35-track album consisting of 18 new tracks, plus 17 previously released songs recorded in Hong Kong, including such classics as “Hong Kong Kids”, “All In”, “Delay No More” and “Worth It”.
In 2022 came East Meets West – a 10-track distillation of three years’ worth of songwriting, which came together while he was isolating in Vermont during the pandemic.
The young rapper scored a coup with the last song on the album, “The Tao, Pt 2”, featuring established New York underground rapper G-Wiz.
“He was close with [hip-hop artist] Nas and was part of [hip-hop group] the Bravehearts, so having him on the track was really meaningful,” Scibetta says.
His bilingual album was recorded at his friend’s Brooklyn studio.
“I just have been feeling the need to create,” he says. “I hope [Hong Kong God II] can offer a global perspective to people through the music.”












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A post shared by Lucas Paul Scibetta | Skibs 🇭🇰 (@ivyleaguedon)



Asked what his favourite song off the album is, he names one of the Japanese tracks: a “more laid-back” one called “Watashi ga Watashi” (I Am Who I Am). “I feel like there’s multiple cultures in that song,” he says.
He is hoping to hold an album launch event in Hong Kong over the summer – “just a small club, something low-key”.
The clothing line, also called East Meets West, is likewise debuting in time for summer, the first product being hoodies plastered with images of Hong Kong bank notes. Besides creating more designs, Scibetta plans to expand into T-shirts, joggers, swim shorts, backpacks and shoes.
The book – not a memoir but non-fiction – is further off, but taking shape partly through sessions at Columbia’s Writing Centre. The chapter the rapper is working on at the time of our call draws on his own experience in Hong Kong of seeking treatment for sleep apnoea. Offered a CPAP machine (the Western solution) or a breathing class (the Eastern one), he chose the latter – and it worked.
The book’s broader preoccupation is the East-West cultural collision that has defined his life. “I find it a fascinating thing to explore.”
Appreciate your upbringing
At this point, his definition of success, he says, is to connect to people from different cultures.
“That’s number one. I mean, it would be nice to get to a level where I can make a living doing what I love. That’s plan A.
“If I suppress my ambition, I’m just miserable. So my idea of success is doing the things that scare the s*** out of you, but that you know you should do. I think that’s the game in life. But it’s tricky.”

Plan B – not that he minds the idea of it – is to put his financial economics degree to use in the business world.
And what would he like readers who remember him from his “Hong Kong Kids” days to take away from his story?
“I want people to appreciate how special their upbringing was – and how much that helps them see the world in a [unique] way,” he says.
“If they can read this and realise, ‘Oh s***, I really can see the world in an interesting way that other people can’t,’ then that’s a pretty special thing.”
Hong Kong God II: The Way of Zen is due for release this summer, with music videos dropping on Instagram. Follow Skibs at @ivyleaguedon


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Lucas Scibetta was 17 when he released his first hip-hop album. Photo: May Tse

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Scibetta was 21 when he entered community college in New York. Photo: courtesy of Lucas Scibetta

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Culture

Lucas Scibetta opened for Pharrell Williams off the back of his 2012 hit and launched a clothing line at 18. Now he’s an Ivy League student


Lucas Scibetta opened for Pharrell Williams off the back of his 2012 hit and launched a clothing line at 18. Now he’s an Ivy League student.


Where is Skibs the Kid now? ‘Hong Kong Kids’ rapper on viral hit, school and ‘Asian vibe’

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Lucas Scibetta opened for Pharrell Williams off the back of his 2012 hit and launched a clothing line at 18. Now he’s an Ivy League student

Lucas Scibetta opened for Pharrell Williams off the back of his 2012 hit and launched a clothing line at 18. Now he’s an Ivy League student