Look man, Dru Down would be one of my favorite rappers ever of all time even if he and I didn’t have the same name. Dude was dripping with pimpery and excellence (both sartorial and sonic), squeezed out two straight up perfect albums, and as a pure rapper has probably gotten… better… with… age? In rap I feel like this happens more than people tend to admit, or perhaps are fine with admitting it but they just don’t care because the internet is a cesspool that rewards youth and beauty. I guess I’m trying to say I’m 26 and have grey hair and therefore have a lot of career anxiety so I can’t imagine what it must be like for someone who is actually old. ANYWAYS, the point is no matter what job you have if you do it a bunch for like ten years you’re gonna get better at it, y’know?

Uh I kinda got off topic there. I guess just listen to this posse cut Dru Down was on off Cobra’s Playaz in Paradise from 1996.

Pretty good, right? BUT, below, listen to FaceTheStreets’ “G’z and Hustlaz,” a slap from a few months ago that Dru takes the last verse on. The track takes “This Is How We Do It” and basically turns it into a hyphy track, which, like, fine, sure. That was bound to happen at some point, maybe it has already happened multiple times. Point is it’s not the most original idea in the world, but the beat to this is slamming enough that you could fart on it and it’d still sound kinda hot. But Dru Down, who comes in around 2:35, just fucking parachutes down into the beat and starts DESTROYING everything in sight. He does the stop-start flow thing he’s great at doing, but it seems like he’s weaving through the beat with the short of casual intricacy that means you’ll probably notice his shrieks and general mastery of inflection before you realize he’s just riding circles around the whole affair.