Rap King of the Queen City?

Samurai Middendorf '16, Staff Writer|October 6, 2015

Cal Performing in a fresh UC Jersey

The Cincinnati rap community, believe it or not, is actually quite vast, but these rappers do not make it so far outside their neighborhoods. One rapper defied those odds, and is currently producing his music in Los Angeles for people all over the nation.

Cal Scruby grew up on the far eastern parts of Cincinnati, and graduated Kings High School, home of the Knights, in 2008. Although Cal Scruby sounds like a stage name, it is actually the rappers real name. After that he attended the well-established Ohio State University, where he recorded his first tracks.

Joining the rap game late, Scruby appeared to skip over the “local rap scene”, and became pretty popular from the start. He is making his way up the ranks and he is on trend to become a household name. Not everyone knows him yet. If you ask local rap enthusiast and senior Robert Pepper who Scruby is he will not even know.

“Never heard of him. You are telling me that he came up out of this city? He must not be anything if I have never heard of him” Said Pepper.

Although Pepper may not be familiar, there certainly a lot of teenagers throughout the city of Cincinnati that you can catch bumping out to Scruby on the way to school, or on the weekends.

Some kids in Cincy are even lucky enough to meet Scruby in real life. I met up with a senior at St. X Garrett Merz. He saw Cal Scruby at a party in Clifton. Merz did not get a chance to speak to the upcoming rapper, but he felt his vibe. Merz said that the party he attended was packed, and people were coming just to get a look at Scruby.

Scruby is big on soundcloud and doing whatever he can to get his sound out there. Most of his songs have been released for free. With all the tracks he puts out, he has been turning a lot of heads. Including rap and hip hop phenom, Chris Brown. The artist Chris Brown first displayed his attention on Twitter. Brown retweeted this tweet from Scruby.

Now that Cal is making hits with big time artist, he will be able to get recognized a lot easier, and be listened to all over. Not just in the Midwest. A prime example of Cal Scruby repping the 513 is in a song titled “Midwest City”. In the song he talks about his love from the state of Ohio, and his loyalty to “the City that cins 2 times”. Scruby is a young rap prodigy who is on the way to greatness. Hopefully as he blows up, he will remember where he came from, the great Queen City. He frequently mentions Cincinnati in all of his songs, and is not afraid to rep the homeland.