Hip hop skit
A hip hop skit is a form of sketch comedy that appears on a hip hop album or mixtape, and is usually written and performed by the artists themselves. Skits can appear on albums or mixtapes as individual tracks, or at the beginning or end of a song. Some skits are part of concept albums and contribute to an album's concept. Skits also occasionally appear on albums of other genres.
The hip-hop skit was more or less pioneered by De La Soul and their producer Prince Paul who incorporated many skits on their 1989 debut album 3 Feet High and Rising.
The Hip Hop Skit although dominant throughout the 90s and the early 2000s began to be phased out in the later half of the 2000s and the early 2010s. Reasons for this include the popularity of MP3 as well as the invention of the iPod Shuffle, which could only play tracks in a random order.
Writing for The AV Club, Evan Rytlewski opined that skits may have originally been in vogue because an expanded tracklisting would look more appealing to would be buyers, although he noted that their first inclusion on a De La Soul record was most likely just them being "eccentric".
NYCE
The New York Currency Exchange (NYCE) is an interbank network connecting the ATMs of various financial institutions in the United States and Canada. NYCE also serves as an EFTPOS network for NYCE-linked ATM cards.
NYCE is based in Secaucus, New Jersey. Rivals of the network include STAR and Discover Card's Pulse. It is owned by Fidelity National Information Services.
Origins
"NYCE" originally started as a local ATM network of banks located in the New York metro area. It was one of the first networks of its kind, originating shortly after the invention of the ATM (Automatic Teller Machine). Membership was open to all banks, credit unions and savings banks, and as use of ATM's grew the network spread beyond its original New York Metro area; by the early 90's, NYCE was the largest regional ATM network in the US.
The public brand name, "NYCE", is an acronym for "New York Cash Exchange"; the original corporate name was the New York Switch Corporation.
The banks which founded and originally owned the network were: National Westminster Bank USA, Chase Manhattan, Manufacturers Hanover, Chemical Bank, Barclays Bank, Marine Midland Bank and the Bank of New York; in later years both BayBank and Fleet Bank from Boston became owners as well. The original Chairman of the Board was Edward Coakley of National Westminster Bank; some of the other members of the Board of Directors were Donald L. Boudreau and Ron Braco of Chase Manhattan, Gary Roboff and Michael Hegarty of Chemical Bank, Stu Segal and Roger Goldman of National Westminster, Robert Muth of Marine Midland, Bob Shay and Lindsey Lawrence of BayBank, and Dennis Lynch of Fleet.
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