For the second consecutive year, Mad Skillz will represent Richmond at the Grammy Awards. It’s the second nomination in the Best Spoken Word Poetry Album category for the founding figure of Virginia’s hip-hop scene. Yet this time around, more than a dozen Richmonders stand to earn the prestigious title of Grammy winner alongside him.

“This isn’t just a win for me,” Skillz says. “This is a win for our city.”

This year’s nomination honors “Words for Days, Vol. 1,” a highly collaborative, uniquely intentional song cycle that could very well change the way you move through time. Starting with the gospel-infused “Sunday’s Service,” a track that glows with strength and spirituality, the album progresses through the days of the week, placing Skillz’s meditations on each day alongside those of guest poets in order to highlight the hurdles and triumphs found along the way.

While some tracks distill feelings many listeners are familiar with, others offer the opportunity to look at the rhythms of the week in a new way. “Monday’s Blues” is especially revelatory. After the track acknowledges how Mondays always come too soon, Skillz concludes that “I still love you / Because I wasn’t always a fan / But I still understand that you represent another try.”

“We have a tendency to forget that just waking up on a Monday is a blessing in itself, because a lot of people didn’t get to wake up,” Skillz says.

A cyclical concept

The idea for setting days of the week to song and poetry arose at a time when Skillz himself was in need of another try. As happy as he was to receive a Grammy nomination for 2024’s “The Seven Number Ones,” which chronicled turning points that shaped his life, and as thrilling as it was to walk the red carpet on music’s biggest night, not taking home the trophy was disappointing. “I feel like I missed the buzzer beater or something of that sort, like I let my team down,” he remembers thinking.

“Then the next day came, and I still was in a funky mood. I remember my wife saying, ‘OK, listen. You’re not gonna be like this every day.’ It made me think about grief, like how it comes in waves, and I started to think about why we feel the way that we feel on certain days.”

While Skillz largely looked backward on “The Seven Number Ones,” this new project afforded the opportunity to elevate another generation of standouts within the communities he’s been cultivating for three decades. “I wanted to get different voices to tell me how they felt as well,” he says. “That’s when it clicked. I’m a concept guy. Once I get the concept, I’m gone.”

Generationally speaking, one contribution is especially remarkable: an interlude voiced by a poet not yet out of elementary school named Carter Sewell. Sewell’s mother was part of the community surrounding the weekly home DJ livestreams Skillz did during the COVID-19 pandemic, and she shared videos of her daughter performing poetry at school. Though the majority of “Words for Days” was complete, Skillz felt compelled to include Sewell’s lightning-in-a-bottle personification of hip-hop. “I got to give her an interlude,” Skillz said to himself. “I want to introduce her to the world.”

Richmond-based producer Ant The Symbol got the 11th-hour invitation to craft the song’s sonic accompaniment. It may have arrived late in the album’s development, but Ant draws a direct line between Sewell’s words and the mission of this era in Skillz’s career.

“What he’s doing with the spoken word opens up the idea of what hip-hop is,” Ant says. “Hip-hop isn’t just rapping. It isn’t just certain beats. It’s a state of mind… [Sewell] knows so much about hip-hop music, and she’s able to put it in a way that a lot of us couldn’t necessarily. For me to be a part of that track is a great honor.”

According to a press release, “Words for Days” features 16 creative contributors — 14 hailing from Richmond, including musicians, poets, singers, songwriters and two of the city’s most trusted engineers, Alex De Jong and Michael Millions — himself a leading voice within the local rap community. The majority of sounds were captured at Spacebomb Studios over the course of just two days in April, with the first day focused on improvised instrumental backdrops and the second day focused on vocals. The first day was so productive the groundwork is already laid for future volumes. “Skillz is very good at knowing who to put in a room — who’s going to work together well,” says Alexander Mack, who produced the album’s latter half while also contributing keyboards. “Each song is literally just a jam that we put together there.”

A record of support

“Words for Days” may have been recorded quickly, but Skillz’s impact on the region’s rap scene is as longstanding as any. He started leading by example in the mid-1990s, when he gained national attention for his album, “From Where???” The album is often credited with putting Virginia hip-hop on the national radar; its intro track even dramatizes the surprise of his geographical origins. In the years since, he’s backed up that influence with direct support — showing up to local poetry nights, cyphers and battles to scout, encourage and rekindle his own creative spark.

“It’s always been a mission to keep people around me that inspired me and helped me to get better,” he says. “I kind of got away from that sometime in my career. But being tapped into the scene at home and following some of these artists and going to their shows and listening to their music, I became inspired all over again.”

“Skillz is somebody who has his finger on the pulse of what’s next and what’s coming up,” says Alexander Mack. Mack first met Skillz virtually around six years ago, when the former was honing his production techniques while living in his parents’ basement in Blackstone, Virginia. Skillz took notice and followed Mack on Instagram. After Mack moved to Richmond, he checked in with Skillz at various events and DJ gigs, and the two eventually started sharing music back and forth.

“To dedicate things that you’ve built up over your lifetime and use that to lift other people up, that’s so respectable and amazing of him,” Mack says of Skillz, who also recently served as adjunct professor and artist in residence at the University of Richmond.

Radio B has seen that impact up close. While in high school, the Richmond-based rapper — himself a force for culture-building and scene cohesion — was aware of Skillz’s early success and began noticing him at open mics and networking events around town. The fact that Skillz was there to witness a particular battle tournament that Radio won made the victory that much sweeter.

“That’s something that I’ve seen him do quite a bit over the years, even more so in recent years,” Radio B says when describing a pattern of Skillz showing up and creating opportunities for others. “This project was absolutely for that purpose — from how he assembled the musicians to how he assembled the poets to him being at Tuesday Verses on a weekly basis for a while, just watching and scouting and forming relationships with poets and with artists.”

Making each day count

Radio B’s verse reflects a long view of self-belief and actualization. He appears on “Thursday’s Struggles,” which conjures a spirit of perseverance. After a chorus sung by British vocalist Estelle encouraging the listener to “Keep on, keep on,” Radio lays out his own journey toward discovering a sense of resiliency within himself. He says that quality is rooted in his mother’s own bravery, in the experiences he’s accrued over time, and in the broader Black experience.

“I think of the Black plight, and not only in America, but the diaspora across the globe — all of the adversities, all of the systemic things that have completely been designed to pressure people,” he says. “Continuously finding these beautiful ways to sprout out of it, or take that pain and then turn it into something beautiful and come out of that even more whole.”

“Thursday’s Struggles” has a thematic companion in “Tuesday’s Thoughts.” Together, the tracks illustrate how the nebulous in-between-ness of Tuesday and Thursday require us to invent and assert meaning of our own.

The same could be said for the process of writing a verse for “Tuesday’s Thoughts,” as Steph Love can attest. The Norfolk-based poet’s only prompts were the song’s title and its determined hook: “We will rise above,” which is delivered with lush, layered harmonies courtesy of singer Kia Bennett, who hails from Richmond’s Southside. Nevertheless, she painted a layered portrait of overcoming imposter syndrome and transcending limitations. “I’ve been gathering my greatness to place it in a grave,” she starts before eventually declaring: “Good thing I have learned to fly even when gravity wants to decide my destiny.”

Steph is active in Hampton Roads’ poetry community, hosting open mics and poetry slams and coaching a team that competes in poetry slam competitions. That collective work has been a focal point in recent years, so her verse on “Words for Days” provided an opportunity to reconnect with her individual artistry. Hearing that the album was nominated for a Grammy was overwhelming news. “I screamed,” she says. “I cried. My cats ran out of the room. I just stopped for a second and said so many prayers of gratitude … People are hitting me up, and then Skillz FaceTimed me. I’m crying, he’s crying. We’re laughing. We’re crying.”

Ant The Symbol watched the nomination special from his couch. When the fifth and final Best Spoken Word Poetry Album nominee was announced, his cats got a similar jolt. “[I was] waiting for the last nomination like, ‘Please be us, please be us, please be us.’ And it was. I jumped up out of my seat and yelled in excitement. I scared the shit out of both my cats. They were looking at me like, ‘What the hell is your problem? What are you doing?’”

“It’s the gift that keeps on giving,” Skillz says of being nominated for the Recording Academy’s highest honor. “Once you get it, you’ll forever be Grammy-nominated, no matter what you do from here on out.”

“It’s just a beautiful thing to be able to be a part of,” Radio B says. “When we were coming up, late ’90s, early-2000s, mid-2000s, it was all about getting a record deal and all of these things you want to accomplish as an artist. Even then, if you were to get all of that, you may still not get a Grammy, right? So to not be signed and be an independent artist and still have that opportunity and still do that, it makes it a little bit more surreal and maybe a little sweeter.”

Then again, Radio notes that there are rewards beyond trophies bestowed by the Recording Academy. “Just being a part of an album that that so many people will be listening to, or have been listening to, and making that a part of their lives … That’s awesome in and of itself.”

The Grammy Award ceremony will air on CBS starting at 8 p.m. on Sunday, Feb. 1. To hear more of “Words for Days, Vol. 1,” visit gotmadskillz.com.