Your Old Droog

[Cheese]

What you think of it?

http://www.audiomack.com/album/your-old-droog/your-old-droog-ep

[⠀]

I think it may be Nas pretending to be someone else.

[Jack Trippa 3z company ho]

Droog=friend in Russian

Your Old Friend=Nas

[Cheese]

It's not Nas

[⠀]

You sure? He seems to rap about the same things, has a very similar flow and if you pitch shift his vocals he sounds even more like Nas:



http://www.mediafire.com/download/fob8lf76neh9qce/Your+Old+Droog+pitch+corrected.zip

When I first heard him I thought Nas had computerized his voice to create an alter ego to live out his Makaveli dreams 18 years later but after a bit of looking around peeps are saying that its some white Russian guy from Brooklyn. The one thing that makes me think it isn't Nas is this guys beat selection is good 

Who knows? Quite dope though - even though his unlikely technique of grabbing the attention and ending up on a Nas affiliated label still makes me go hmm... You know Nasir Jones loves these kind of gimmicks.

[Jack Trippa 3z company ho]

Every nuance of this dudes delivery is spot on Nas. If this really is a Russian cat from NY where are the vids of him spitting? This dude is hella talented so I don't believe in this day and age that there would be no footage.

I really think its Nas just fucking around. I could be wrong.

[⠀]

I know what you mean, that Russian thing was just something I read whilst looking around. That could just be based on the whole Droog thing which means friend in Russian or it could just be a reference to A Clockwork Orange.

The more I listen to this the more it sounds like Nas crossed with a bit of Jay Electronica. Maybe its a new concept album that Nas is dropping? The pitched version is stupid close to Nas though.

Either that or it could be a new type of technology that allows people to bite someone elses style, like Photoshop for vocals?

[Jack Trippa 3z company ho]

With technology anything seems possible nowadays.

You're correct about this supposedly being a Russian cat...there were some tweets put out by complex magazine where they say that this in fact a Russian dude from NY spitting. However they provided zero proof nor links so I'm def not taking them at their word...they could be in on it, call me paranoid lol, but again, in this day and age the fact that this is even a debate says a hell of a lot and that's the main reason why I'm skeptical (not to mention how dead on his Nas style is).

[⠀]

Well, this is apparently the old droog:



And here's an interesting write up:

The first email came on Thursday from Wyatt.

"Yo Nathan. I stumbled on a post on Reddit claiming Nas is using the pseudonym Your Old Droog. They have a crazy similar sound and Droog is the Russian word for friend so his name would be "Your Old Friend." Not sure if its Nas or not but regardless it's dope and would be a great discussion for RHN..."

At the time I was busy watching videos of Rosa Acosta stretching working, so I filed that email in my almost impossibly large "possibly cool shit to look into later" folder. Then, just a couple hours later, another email about the supposed Nas and Your Old Droog connection appeared in my inbox, this time from Ryan. And then another, and another, and by the fifth email it became obvious that I had to take the time to look into whatever the fuck was happening.

Here's what I found:

1) On June 3, someone named Your Old Droog uploads his EP to SoundCloud. Like 97.89% of hip-hop EPs from new (allegedly new!) rappers, it goes essentially unnoticed.

2) On June 13, a comment thread on Reddit pops up proposing that Droog is an alter-ego of Nas, and "Your Old Droog" is a new secret Nas project that Nas undertook to, as the theory went, get back to his hip-hop roots without any of the pressure that would inevitably come with an official Nas release.

3) Also submitted as evidence...now that I'm listening to it again, the dude does sound like Nas, Mass Appeal - a magazine run by Nas - wrote about him one time, Your Old Droog means "your old friend" in Russian (and isn't Nas an old friend to us all?), when sped up Droog sounds even more Nas, very little was known about this alleged Your Old Droog, and Nas had yet to acknowledge the growing controversy. Hmmm...why won't you address the issue on Twitter Nas....UNLESS YOU'VE GOT SOMETHING TO HIDE!.



By Friday the conspiracy theory had gone from Reddit thread to full blown internet phenomenon. More and more outlets picked up the story as the growing consensus seemed to be that this was, indeed, Nas. Obviously. And of course the "story" blew up because, if you even care the tiniest bit about hip-hop, how could you possibly not try to figure out if one of the greatest rappers of all-time just dropped a secret project? When given the choice between "holy shit Nas just dropped a secret project!!!" and "this guy who kind of sounds like Nas who no one cared about 24 hours ago dropped an EP," how much more fun is it to believe that Droog is actually Nas? How fucking awesome would it be to discover a new secret Nas project? And here, it was actually happening!

Except it wasn't actually happening.

I won't front, by no means was I immune to the allure of the Nas = Your Old Droog story. Because I'm an old, jaded internet rap conspiracy veteran (never forget who broke the Pulitzer winning Krispy Kreme is a hoax story), my instincts said there was no way this was Nas. But then time and hope began to wear away at me. Now that you mention it, he does sound a lot like Nas. And crazier things have turned out to be true; before it really happened, what were the chances of Beyonce, the most famous and lucrative star on the planet, dropping a surprise album with absolutely no leaks or warning? In comparison, Nas recording an EP under an alias seemed almost ordinary.

I couldn't stop thinking about it. So even though I almost never write on the weekends, I opened up ye olde laptop on Saturday morning and set out to write a "holy shit I think this is Nas" article. Before I did, I checked God Google to see if there were any developments, and there were. The homie Dharmic had written a piece recounting all the times he had met Droog in person, and during none of those times was he Nas. And Dharmic wasn't alone. Other people, including Eskay of Nahright, also said that they knew or had run into Droog, a white Russian kid from New York City, who, despite being a pretty damn good rapper with a lot of similarities to Nas, was decidedly not Nas.

Well then...there went my article. I threw out a Tweet and called it a day:

    @refinedhype @dharmicX how is it settled? Still no evidence. Hearsay, a photo with no caption, & No audio of this radio show
    — Justin Smith (@equiptsmif) June 14, 2014



And that's when I realized just how far from reality the internet had taken us. Dharmic had actually met Droog, in real life, like not on the internet, multiple times, and that "evidence" wasn't enough compared to the already elaborate web of connections that had been woven safely inside the bubble of virtual reality. In the span of 24 hours sites went from headlines like "Confirmed: Your Old Droog is Nas", that "confirmation" being a Tweet that later turned out to be a hoax of its own, to claiming their special insider source had "confirmed" that it wasn't actually Nas. So yeah.

The more I thought about it, the more it made sense. When a site could go from a definitive headline like "Confirmed: Your Old Droog is Nas" to later issue a series of updates that essentially confirms that no, Nas isn't Old Droog, how could anyone tease out the real from the fake in such a schizophrenic environment? If you had already seen a hundred confirmations and retractions, how could you trust that this random guy - what's his name, Dharmic X? - was himself legit? Maybe he was just part of the conspiracy. And the pitch corrected audio? DON'T FORGET THE PITCH CORRECTED AUDIO! We were now in moon landing territory.

I might have even thought the same thing, except I actually know Dharmic, and it was balls crazy to think that pitch audio uploaded by the esteemed user1402886 somehow trumped him just straight up saying he'd met Droog. So I called him, and we talked about it:



As far as I'm concerned, that's it. There's no "might not be Nas" or "maybe isn't Nas" qualifiers necessary anymore. Droog isn't Nas in the same way that a spoon isn't a fork and the sun isn't a cat. Maybe in another month it'll turn out I'm wrong and Dharmic was brain washed by the Illuminati and I unknowningly participated in a conspiracy cover up and everything we've ever believed is a lie. But probably not.

I have to say, though, I am disappointed. The fantasy that this was actually a project from Nas was way more fun than the decidedly mundane reality that Droog is some kid who's not Nas. Believe me, I would have much rather been writing an article about where Nas' secret alias EP ranks among his albums than this breakdown of a digital conspiracy. And it was awesome chasing the tail of this conspiracy. If someone had played me the "Your Old Droog" EP out of context, I don't know if I would have said he sounded like Nas. But when I heard it in the context of "this might be Nas," well then yeah, now that you mention it, he does sound like Nas...suspiciously so. (By the same token, once I tell you that 50 Cent is saying "talking bout hittin him with this dick" right here, you won't be able to unhear it.)

The whole Nas' alter-ego ride wave was good times, I wish it was true. But this is reality, and your reality is what it is, not what you want it to be. Even on the internet.

[Nathan S. is the managing editor of The DJBooth, the proprietor of RefinedHype, and a hip-hop writer. He also occasionally talks in podcast form and appears on RevoltTV. His beard is awesome. This is his Twitter.]

Written by Nathan S. on 06/16/14

link

[J. B A N A N A S]

Best Nas project in years.

[Jack Trippa 3z company ho]

Show me this cracker spitting these songs and we're good. No excuse that we don't have that. He's even affiliated w/ Mass Appeal for fucks sake lol.

Some 2-bit magazines vouching that they met him before w/ zero evidence of anything doesn't do it for me either.

It's Nas

[⠀]

As I've said before, the links to Nas are way too many to be coincidental. The flow, subject matter and references however just take the piss.

But the more I listen to it the more Jay Harmonica I hear sprinkled with a bit of Game. There was an interview with Nas a while back where he said something along the lines of "I feel its unfair with my next album, I got something planned that makes me feel like Edison, something that will change the game".

My bets are on a new piece of software, like vocal Photoshop that's being showcased on this album that either takes separate artists doing the same take and muxes them into one vocal or allows one artist to record a verse and then apply effects in the style of another artist over the top.

Watch, when this hits and gets cracked you're going to hear Hennnnessssseeeyyyyy and Eneemmmieeeees like never before.

[Cheese]

lol @ conspiracy theories

[⠀]

So Nas isn't Droog but Droog is Nas 

[Hack Wilson - real]

he's gonna be doing concerts soon


not nas