In an interview with HipHopFiend.Org, Ski breaks down why Mos Def did not appear on the final version of 24 Hour Karate School.

A lot of people are asking why Mos Def wasn’t on “24 Hour Karate School” despite tracks like “Taxi” and “Cream Of the Planet” being used to originally promote the album (via Creative Control visuals,) instead appearing as instrumentals on the album?

The problem was this. I’m going to tell you the real situation. The problem was; when we started this project, everybody, me, Dame Dash, Curren$y and Mos Def were all under the same mind-frame that, yo, “24 Hour Karate School” is going to be the mixtape that Ski puts out. And Ski’s going to use “Taxi,” and Ski’s going to use “Cream of the Planet” and “24 Hour Karate School” and the songs I did with Curren$y and the songs I did with everyone else. Everybody knew this already, Mos Def was coming to the dojo everyday; we were all working together as a unit. But somewhere along the line, Mos Def changed his mind and felt disrespected as if we were trying to put things out, or Dame was trying to put things out, without letting him know. Now I don’t know where that came from, and I don’t know how he came to that conclusion when we all knew what we was working on. We was going to do the Center Edge (Mos Def, Jay Electronica, Curren$y and Stalley’s supergroup) record, Curren$y’s albums came out like they were supposed to, and “24 Hour Karate School” came out like it was supposed to, without Mos Def unfortunately. I would have loved to put those records out, but he would just not clear it for us. He was just like “No I feel I don’t want to do it” so I’m like “aight cool.” I wasn’t mad, I just said, you know, I learned my lesson from that project, part 2 is going to be a zillion times better, and I’m going to make sure I get all the artists to sign clearance forms to say “you can use me for this album.”

Check out the full piece at HipHopFiend.Org