Waynesboro, PA · emo-rap · trap · hip-hop

Lil Skies

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Melodic, tattooed emo-rap from small-town Pennsylvania — big pop-punk feelings delivered with trap drums and zero irony.

Lil Skies was born Kimetrius Christopher Foose in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, on August 4, 1998. His father, Michael Burton Jr., recorded as Dark Skies and later as BurntMan, and his stage name plays on his father's old one. The family moved to Waynesboro, Pennsylvania, when he was in third grade.

Before signing to a label he sold marijuana and worked at a McDonald's and a Japanese restaurant to cover studio time and video costs. When he was eleven his father was badly injured in a workplace chemical explosion, and the two later wrote an album together, Father-Son Talk, about the recovery. Foose graduated from Waynesboro Area Senior High School in 2016 and briefly attended Shippensburg University before leaving to focus on rap.

He opened for Fetty Wap at Shippensburg University in 2016 and released his first mixtape, Alone, the following January. "Red Roses," with Landon Cube, and "Nowadays" followed, catching Atlantic Records' attention. Life of a Dark Rose, his 2018 major-label debut, reached number ten on the Billboard 200 and went platinum, and he toured nationally with Lil Uzi Vert around the same time.

His debut album Shelby (2019) reached number five on the Billboard 200, followed by Unbothered (2021) at number fifty. He released the mixtape Out Ur Body Music in 2024 and the album Evolution of the Rose in 2025, with a further album, LS4*, expected in 2026.

He remains tied to the wave of emo-inflected rap that emerged online in the late 2010s, heavily tattooed, and keeps to the template set on those early tracks: melodic, heavily sung vocals over trap drums, with lyrics dwelling on heartbreak and self-doubt as much as on success.

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