Dru Down

The Oakland rapper whose 1994 'Pimp of the Year' put the Players Ball's annual award on the Billboard Hot 100.

Dru Down is the East Oakland rapper whose debut single, "Pimp of the Year," carried the title of the Players Ball's annual award into the pop charts. The song appeared on Explicit Game, released by Relativity Records on September 6, 1994, and was produced by Ant Banks; it was recorded at Too Short's studio, according to the account preserved on its Wikipedia page, and built on a sample of Don Julian and the Larks' "Shorty the Pimp," itself the theme from the 1973 film of that name. It reached number 65 on the Billboard Hot 100, stayed on that chart for 24 weeks, and peaked at number 14 on Hot Rap Tracks. A radio edit retitled "Mack of the Year" removed the violence for airplay, and Complex's Willy Staley ranked the song tenth among the fifty greatest Bay Area rap songs in 2011, noting the depth of pimp culture's influence on Oakland rappers.

The title has a history of its own. "Pimp of the Year" is the top honour at the Players Ball, the gathering Bishop Don Magic Juan began in 1974 as a birthday party for pimps from Milwaukee and Chicago. Denise Dowling's 2000 Salon report described how the award was decided: informal voting among Don Juan and his associates a month before the ball, weighing earnings, reputation and possessions, with secondary titles such as "Super Player" and "Boss Player" so that more men could go home with something. Don Juan is said to have won it thirteen years in a row before retiring in 1985. Dru Down's song turned that back-room prize into a boast a teenager could sing along to, which is exactly why it was edited for radio.

Where Dru Down stands in relation to the title is only partly clear. In a May 2021 interview with Jesse Taylor of Passion of the Weiss he said plainly, "I was in the real-life business of managing, marketing and peddling prostitutes," and told an anecdote about two sisters he described as working for him. That is his statement; no arrest, charge or third-party account supports or contradicts it, and the women are unnamed. The same interview recorded his discovery, at twelve or thirteen, that the funk bassist Bootsy Collins was his biological father, a relationship he says began in earnest after his release from juvenile detention around age twenty. Jason Ankeny's AllMusic biography records the arc that followed: Can You Feel Me (1996), which reached number 54 on the Billboard 200; a role as Kayo in Larry Cohen's Original Gangstas (1996); a guest verse on 2Pac's All Eyez on Me; and later independent albums titled Pimpin' Phernelia (2001), Gangsta Pimpin' (2002) and Chronicles of a Pimp (2010) on his own Pimp On Records.

His legal record, as reported, concerns driving rather than vice: a three-year jail sentence in 2013 for driving under the influence and evading police, mentioned in Passion of the Weiss and on Wikipedia but not located in a court source by this research. What is documented is a hit, a title with a lineage, and a catalogue that never let the word go. What is established only by his own word is the life behind it.

ALSO KNOWN AS
Danyel Robinson (AllMusic gives Darnel Robinson)

BORN
Oakland, California, 1971 — exact date not independently verified

STATUS
Living

ERA
1993–present

ASSOCIATED WITH
East Oakland; Relativity Records; Ant Banks; Too Short; The Luniz; Pimp On Records

STANDING
Partly documented