“Rap records always had some dialogue in them, like, ‘Hey man, I’m gonna’ smack you in the face,’ or ‘Yo…let’s get it!’ but they weren’t sketches with a whole vibe to them,” Paul says. “We did it to fill that void, to give our album some structure. It was just something we tried out and it evolved. We never thought it would become a rap album staple.”

For their interludes, De La Soul spoofed Day-Glo game shows and eccentric children’s records. They spontaneously conceived everything that last day in the studio. No paper, just pure absurdity.

The same went for the group’s sophomore album, De La Soul Is Dead, which upped the complexity with a running satire about teenage thugs lampooning a De La tape they found in the trash. If you didn’t know better, you’d assume it was stitched into the fabric from first conception.

“After we finished recording, we just picked a day to do the skits. We had the concept of kids in the schoolyard and got Mista Lawnge from Black Sheep, a few friends, and their nieces and nephews,” recalls Paul. “It was always the same: nothing written, all off the top of the head. Sketch improv-style like comics performing in the subway.”

The skits offered three-dimensionality and surrealist levitation previously only seen in Slick Rick and Rammellzee. Perfect scores in The Source validated the high concept experimentation. Rap albums could suddenly be more than song collections. They could be game shows, panoramic films, or self-aware parody. Spinal Tap, Scarface.

Interstitial padding quickly became practically mandatory. But while De La unquestionably popularized the trope, the first full-fledged rap skit was probably “Baggin’ on Moms,” released in November 1988 by Compton gangsta rapper, King Tee.

De La Soul had finished recording 3 Feet High before Tee’s early West Coast classic hit stores. Each innovation occurred independently of one another. Yet Tee beat them to market by several months, making him the Leif Erikson of rap skits to De La Soul’s Columbus.

These first two skits underscore the aesthetic contrast of early East and West Coast hip hop. King Tee’s raunchiness descended from Red Foxx, Richard Pryor, Rudy Ray Moore, and seminal South Central comic label, Laff Records. De La Soul’s style was comparatively high concept and outwardly subversive. Goofy psych-jazz bricolage. The Compton gangster had that nasty funk. (“Ya mama got so much hair under her arm it looks like she got Buckwheat in a headlock.”)

Digital Underground’s Sex Packets soon followed. Fusing Funkadelic with Weird Science, the Oakland crew produced what might be rap’s first fully fleshed concept album: a carnal saga about a government-manufactured glowing pill that gave wet dreams so “realistic that they would blow your mind.” You could choose from male or female, blonde or redhead, orgy or ordinary. It came in condom-sized packets and was originally intended for astronauts, until it got in the right hands.

Taking inspiration from these templates, you can consider 1990 to be year one of the rap skit. Kindergarten Cop was in theaters and Ice Cube flashed his AK-47 on “The Drive-By.” His theatrical career traces back to the vignettes on AmeriKKKA’s Most Wanted. From whispering footsteps to metal doors slamming, Cube and Sir Jinx sucked you into the scene with meticulous detail. The assassins blared, “Bust a Move,” before blasting their rivals. Cube subverted and reveled in gangsta stereotypes at the same time, establishing a pattern that prevailed time and time again.

After Cube left the world’s most dangerous group, the nihilistic shock value humor remained intact. Their 1990 EP, 100 Miles & Running offered the immortal “Just Don’t Bite It,” a tongue-in-cheek instructional commercial featuring Eazy E’s certified oral sex curriculum. By the time their final album dropped the next year, N.W.A. had five skits dedicated to murdering hookers, ersatz doo-wop songs and fake bail bond commercials. They lacerated protestors, advocated cocaine over wine, and repeatedly called Ice Cube a pussy. It wasn’t subtle, but it consolidated their brand as champion rap sociopaths.

Even if their approach vastly differed from Prince Paul, N.W.A. employed skits for the same ends: to caricature themselves and their enemies, to strengthen their identity without self-seriousness. In fact, Prince Paul praises the N.W.A. salvos as the format’s peak. Like the soul, funk, rock and jazz samples they plundered, everything in pop culture was ripe for appropriation. If the early ’90s skits remain iconic, it’s because they had first pick. Everything felt fresh.