BIO  Slaine grew up in south Boston where he became interested in hip-hop after hearing the early works of House of Pain, Gangstarr and Edo G. Upon moving to New York City when he was eighteen years of age, Slaine became active in that city's burgeoning underground hip-hop scene.

In 2007, Slaine made his feature film debut as the drug-dealing gun runner Bubba Rogowski in the Ben Affleck-directed film Gone Baby Gone. Affleck had read an article about Slaine in the Boston Herald and called him in to read for a part; though the rapper was a relative unknown with no acting experience at that point, Affleck successfully convinced the movie's backers to let him cast Slaine. He later played Albert "Gloansy" MacGloan, a member of a Charlestown gang of bank robbers, in Affleck's second directorial effort, The Town, released in September 2010.

Both films included music by Slaine and his affiliated groups on their soundtracks. Gone Baby Gone featured Slaine's track "Nature of the Beast" and "Fallen Angelz" by Special Teamz, while The Town featured "99 Bottles" and "Run It" by Slaine.

In an emotional interview on Conspiracy Worldwide Radio, Slaine discussed his possible retirement from music, citing the problems he had with the planned release of A World Without Skies and the issues he has with the music industry. The album was originally scheduled for release on October 26, 2010, and copies were actually pressed and ready for distribution when Slaine and Surburban Noize chose to hold back and substantially rework the album due to sample clearance issues. To make up for the delay, Slaine released his mixtape The Devil Never Dies at the same time the album had been expected to hit shelves.

The original version of the album leaked after Nokia Digital accidentally released a digital version for sale on the planned October 26, 2010 release date. Therefore, the album was pushed for August 16, 2011 as different version to rectify sample clearing issues.

Three tracks from the original version were legitimately released in 2010: the first single, "99 Bottles" (which also appeared on the soundtrack for the movie The Town), "Mistaken Identity," which appeared on the La Coka Nostra mixtape The Audacity of Coke, and "Crillionaires," which circulated on the artists' Myspace pages.