Harold Stallworth called all across town to borrow a four-pound.
Hus Kingpin is a poor man’s Roc Marciano. But in a year where Roc has managed to keep an uncharacteristically low profile, poverty is relative. Hus’s latest project, Nahright Hype, is just that: a whopping 27-track mixtape sanctioned by the time-honored hip-hop blog of the same name. More than a third of the tracklist, for better or worse, consists of industry endorsements intended to raise the profile of the fledgling Hempstead rapper. Most immediately apparent is the fact that Hus has superb taste, at least in regard to east coast aesthetics: Nahright Hype is peppered with dialogue from Boardwalk Empire; he’s courted beats from the likes of DJ House Shoes, Frank The Butcher, and his most prominent influence, Roc Marciano; and for the 20th anniversary of Illmatic, he instead chose to record a plush tribute to It Was Written. And therein lies the challenge for Hus going forward: laying claim to wholly unique ideas, if only to distinguish his style from his sensibilities. Good taste, while gratifying in the short term, will never be a substitute for creativity.
