Skee-Lo is an American rapper who gave the mid-1990s one of its most endearing and unusual hits. "I Wish", released in 1995, swapped the era's hard-edged posturing for a wistful, self-deprecating wish list ("I wish I was a little bit taller"), and that gentle humour, set to a bright, jazzy beat, made it a Grammy-nominated crossover smash.
He struggled to follow it, tangled up in label difficulties, and the rest of his catalogue never reached anywhere near the same audience.
On streaming, "I Wish" sits near 280 million plays, while his next most-streamed track trails at under five million. That sends the ratio above 60, far past our 5.0 line.
By our measure Skee-Lo is a certified one-hit wonder. His is a familiar 90s story with a bittersweet edge: an artist who connected widely with one charming, good-natured song that stood out precisely because it was so unguarded, then found the momentum stalling, leaving that single likeable hit standing far ahead of everything else he managed to release. Its wishful, daydreaming chorus has aged into a fond piece of 90s nostalgia, sampled and referenced long after its maker slipped from the charts, and on streams it now stands almost entirely alone.