Dancehall Producer Dre Skull Buys $7 Million Home In Upscale Los Angeles Community
American music producer Dre Skull, popularly known for being the man behind the production of Vybz Kartel’s Kingston Story and Popcaan‘s debut album Where We Come From, recently bought a $7 Million home in the upscale community of Los Feliz in Los Angeles, California.
The 3,879 square foot house, according to Variety, is situated on a “lovely Mediterranean compound” with four bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms, along with a guesthouse. The purchase has been described as one of 2020’s biggest deals in the historic Los Feliz neighborhood.
According to the publication, the house, which was built in 1928, was restored and extensively upgraded by the sellers, filmmaker Guy Shelmerdine and his wife Ashley Jacobs.
“Tucked into the rolling hills just below Griffith Observatory, on one of the best streets in Los Feliz, the Hershey villa contains three separate structures: a detached three-car garage, a two-story main house, and a wee guesthouse that’s partially hidden behind leafy foliage, sequestered at the very back of the .36-acre lot,” Variety noted.
Born Andrew McClain Hershey, in Cleveland Ohio, Dre Skull in past interviews, including one with the Jamaica Observer, has said that he discovered Jamaican music through his collection of Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry records. He said a subsequent trip to Jamaica in 2010, cemented his love for the island’s music and its culture.
Now a resident of Brooklyn, he has produced songs featuring other Reggae and Dancehall artistes including Beenie Man, Mavado, Konshens, Spice, QQ and Tifa through his indie label Mixpak Records. He has also written and produced for Drake and Snoop Dogg’s Reincarnation album.
According to Variety, in addition to his successful music forays, Dre Skull Hershey is also the “wealthy heir to an East Coast-based insurance fortune”.
“His father, Ohio businessman Barry J. Hershey, grew Capitol American into a market juggernaut; in 1997, the firm was sold to insurance giant Conseco as part of a $1.7 billion deal,” it noted.
Dre Skull’s first track with a Jamaican artiste was Sizzla‘s Gone Too Far. He next worked with Vybz Kartel on a single called Yuh Love, which led to the Worl’ Boss’ album, Kingston Story, in 2011, which peaked at number seven on the Billboard Reggae Album Chart.
He was also the executive producer of Forever, Popcaan’s sophomore album.
Dre Skull’s label released Popcaan’s first album, Where We Come From in 2014 which peaked at number two on the Billboard Reggae Album Chart.
But it is Vybz Kartel with whom Dre Skull particularly liked to work. In a 2012 interview with Boomshots about the artiste’s Kingston Story album he hailed the Portmore native as “versatile, with interesting wordplay and impressive melodicism”, a world class artiste and one of music’s “true greats”.
https://www.instagram.com/p/By-3ZhggNY9/
He said that within a span of nine days he and Kartel, whom he lauded as a world-class songwriter, recorded 15 songs for the album.
“He instantly knows how the structure works. He completely understands it… It’s like a dance between him and the engineer. Within about 10 minutes every time he’s basically come the melody ideas figured out,” he said of Kartel at the time.
“He’s a craftsman. He’s done so much of this. Literally an hour, or an hour and a half, and it’s done. So literally we’d have nights where it was like four songs. Six and a half, seven hours and I’m walking out with four songs,” he noted.
Kingston Story featured tracks such as Jamaica, Beautiful Girl, Half on a Baby, Go Go wine, Yuh Love, Wine Pon Me and Ghetto Youth.