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Weekly updates


RU - Rap Game Scooby Droog

Sometimes you can hear a rapper’s influences seeping through every line. In the case of Nasty Nas, he was clearly a student of Kool G Rap and Tragedy Khadafi, yet he added on to their foundation and created something new, just as the late Big L adapted Lord Finesse’s punchline rap technique and made it more advanced. Not long after Nas hit the scene, we began to hear other MCs who sounded remarkably similar in terms of delivery and rhyme style, such as Mic Geronimo and Ak Skills, while even Jeru The Damaja had a Canadian doppelganger by the name of Saukrates. In more recent times we’ve had a vocal contingent of rap fans insisting that Action Bronson is nothing more than a Ghostface clone (an argument that I don’t agree with at all).

Readers of street-level rap sites such as ego trip and my very own Unkut Dot Com were already nodding their heads to the raw rap qualities of Your Old Droog via a couple of early leaks and the release of his EP at the start of this month. The fact that his voice was reminiscent of Nas on several tracks was certainly a plus, since Mr. Jones has been blessed with an excellent vocal timbre for dropping rhymes. Produced by Timeless Truth affiliate El RTNC and DJ Eclipse’s right-hand man on the Halftime Radio Show, DJ Skizz, Droog’s free EP was a breath of fresh air for those of us with Conservative Rap tendencies who enjoy the sounds of rap that may have been recorded on a back staircase. After ihearing it, I contacted Skizz on the off-chance I might get a little something from Droog for a new mixtape I’m finishing up, and he said he’d see if there was anything spare available.

A few weeks later, some talk begins to circulate that Your Old Droog is in fact a secret alias of Nas himself, who apparently has nothing better to do than put out free mixtapes with underground rap producers just for shits ‘n’ giggles. As we all know, rap stans are an odd bunch, and Nas tragics are a rather obsessive bunch in particular, so it was only a matter of time until someone pitched-up the entire Droog EP to ‘prove’ that he was in fact Nas and then uploaded it to the internets as proof. All well and good, except for the fact that Droog dropped a song with DJ Skizz back in December 2013 when he was calling himself Imaginary Droog. So are we to believe that this is also a “secret Nas” song as well? I’m 600% sure that Nasir doesn’t know what a Tumblr is.

This is hardly the first time that something like this has happened. Back in 1987, a Philly rapper called Jewel T dropped ‘Ride The Crossfade’, which sounds almost identical to LL Cool J’s ‘Rock The Bells’ when pitched up, while Unique’s ‘Axe Maniac’ could easily be mistaken for a sped-up a Kool G Rap song. But thanks to the era of the superfan, we now have conspiracy theories that this is all a cover-up by Mass Appeal magazine and Complex to deny the “allegations”, as well as a fake Twitter account making posts such as this to fuel the fire. On the plus side, all the attention has forced more people than may have otherwise paid attention to check this quality release, and my dude ACCLAIM’s Vinny Tang won a $50 bet with a gullible housemate. Meanwhile, Nas is busy recording ‘Summer On Smash 2: Swizz’ Revenge’ somewhere in Miami.

Keep up with Robbie’s weekly ‘No Country for Old (Rap) Men’ here.