Rugby Wild ‘Scuffs’

Lana here, with her Stateside slang.

The old “where are you from” question is always an interesting one. Its asker merely intends it as an icebreaker, a chipping away at my coolly aloof exterior (NOT). Little do they know that a whole bookcase of gold-leafed stories is waiting to break open. For those of you who’ve heard me answer this question in its tl;dr iteration, you know the gist of it- born in Canada, raised in the States; wed to Montrealian ideologies, brought up in humdrum suburbia. But as much as the cardboard houses, the indoor shopping malls, the soccer mom minivans drive me insane, there are treasured keepsakes of my suburban hometown that have embedded themselves into my nostalgia centre.  The savory crispness of Checkers’ fries, the wade-ability of its ubiquitous creeks, and of course… the smile-inducing jovialness of DMV slang. “Dip,” “Bop,” “Chester,” “Bet”… a whole barrel of incredibly animated colloquialisms. Listening to the first couple Goldlink splits in my best friend’s car, cranking the bass to rearview-mirror-rattling decibels… The music of the DMV, wrapping its deliciously flowing slang in a drapery of juicy backing tracks, that’s the stuff that brings me back.

Hailing from the marvelous Mid-Atlantic, the centre of it all, Rugby Wild is swooping in with some super fresh chops. Splitting his childhood between Newark and Baltimore, Rugby combines sassy-smart lyricism with cool California Macintosh Plus-echoing backing tracks. Peeling back the wrapping paper from his upcoming summer release Millennials, Rugby just dropped the video for his new single “Scuffs,” his spliff-in-mouth sporting verses swathed in a rhythmically enticing, comfortably fuzzy backing track. Approaching music-making as he would acting, Rugby Wild takes on a remarkably cool-kid street style and video presence that makes you want to join him on his party-ridden tour of the sights of New York. Hear Rugby’s most recent single, “Scuffs,” in preparation for his house-party-ready upcoming double album Millennials.