"Come to 42nd Street and hear a man in the subway play "Hotline Bling" on trombone;" Your Old Droog & Marco Polo Effortlessly Flip Nu Shooz's "I Can't Wait" Into "42 (Forty Deuce)"

"["42" is] a song that's literally been in-the-making for over a decade. Wanted to flip this sample since '05 and I finally brought it to a producer and got the job done," Ukrainian-American rapper Your Old Droog, who was widely speculated to be Nas alias at first, recently told Complex upon the premier of his "42 (Forty Deuce)" music video. It was produced by Marco Polo and Droog himself, who together, somehow managed to expertly flip a sample of Nu Shooz's 1984 Billboard Hot Dance Club Play chart No.1, "I Can't Wait." "42" was proceeded by its frenzied @CLEOFUS-designed single artwork about two weeks prior, which featured Your Old Droog front and center in an Elmo costume surrounded by a bunch of eclectic New Yorkers, but now, along with his Jonah Schwartz-directed video, makes a lot more sense in retrospect. "It's about a special place that I really used to frequent back in the days. The video is a halfway glimpse into that and my halfway break-dancing skills," Droog continued within an email sent to Complex. "42" is loosely based around an all too familiar concept of getting stopped in the city streets by a Walkman-totting no name amateur "rapper" walking alongside of you and repeatedly asking, "yo bro, you listen to Hip-Hop?" I've learned that there's really no good answer to this moderately rhetorical question; if you dare say, "no," they'll either start calling you an a$_hole, racist, cheap b*stard, etc. or in my case, somehow still manage to strong-arm you into buying a sh*tty Peanuts-themed mixtape.


Droog's terribly unsuspecting I ❤ New Yorker, however, is treated to a slightly more pleasant experience, vaguely similar to that of The Stepkids' trippy, haze-filled Kurt Braunohler & Wyatt Cenac-starring "Legend In My Own Mind" clip released during their brief tenure at Stones Throw. Throughout the course of Schwartz's city streetlight-lit "42" treatment, our four-eyed out-of-towner runs in to Droog a number of times, disguised as a unibrowed hot dog cart attendant, a "homeless" Vietnam vet, a break-dancing Tickle Me Elmo, a pushy window washer, a talented late night caricature artist, and a FILA-sporting flask-chugging pedicab driver. Despite the fact that he still lacks major label representation, Droogh Grant is currently readying his debut full-length album (or second, if you count his expanded Your Old Droog EP-LP) for a tentative fourth quarter release. Although he recently told Hot 97 DJ Peter Rosenberg that he could theoretically "drop a joint everyday, if [he] wanted to" and already has a couple albums-worth of material recorded and stockpiled just awaiting their imminent release. Following the release of his critically-acclaimed Rock-themed KINISON EP, Your Old Droog has quietly unleashed The Nicest EP, "Unlimited Metrocard," "Senseless Killin' II," a remix of The Weeknd's "Tell Your Friends," Italian Soul-Funk-sampling "Before I Go," his Top Shelf Premium "OFF TOP" Freestyle, and impeccable Seinfeld theme-interpolating "Basketball & Seinfeld," all of which were haphazardly uploaded to Soundcloud.