S.H. Fernando Jr., AKA SKIZ Interview (From the Streets of Shaolin: The Wu-Tang Saga)
S.H. Fernando Jr., AKA SKIZ is the author of the new book From the Streets of Shaolin: The Wu-Tang Saga. SKIZ spent a good deal of the '90s writing about Wu-Tang for various magazines, so he had a front row seat to the group’s evolution. Next up for SKIZ? A travel memoir about his time spent in the many countries where he’s worked and lived.
How did you get to where you are today?
Wow, how many years do you have (LOL). I could write a book about that and I actually am. To be honest, music is the center of my existence. As a life-long music fan, who used to spend all my money on records since about the age of 8, I found out early on that as a journalist, you could actually get free records if you reviewed them (forget about getting paid—I wanted free records!). So, that’s what I started doing in high school for my school paper. But my first paid gig was for the New York Review of Records (shout out to Brad Balfour) when I first moved to NYC to attend journalism school at Columbia. Then I started writing for The Source, which was started by two of my classmates from Harvard. We were cool like that because we both had radio shows at WHRB, the Harvard radio station. From there, it just snowballed until I was reviewing records for the Grand Dame of the music press at the time, Rolling Stone (shout out to Anthony DeCurtis, who brought me on, and later, Nathan Brackett). Beyond reviews, I was also obviously writing articles for these publications and more, allowing me to meet and hang out with some of my idols. So that’s just one element of my so-called “career.” While I was writing about music, I was also making it and releasing records on my own indie label, WordSound. This was during the whole decade of the 90s and into the early 2000s—I was dealing with manufacturing, distribution, promotion, making videos—so, I’ve really been involved in all facets of the music industry.
Can you please briefly describe the book?