Luke Nasty Wields Weaponized Nostalgia with Surgical Precision

Medical Metaphors

Luke Nasty

Two popular songs by a music artist named Luke Nasty both sample older songs. It is more than just, "A sample," honestly, this is full on taking a huge chunk and doing something I've talked about off-and-on here, weaponizing nostalgia. I am not saying this in a manner meant to insult Luke Nasty at all, no, I am in fact impressed. I feel this way because Luke Nasty and wielding weaponized nostalgia with a surgical precision at the same level of a doctor carefully transplanting a heart. Luke Nasty (and his production team) are going into older songs, extracting the beating-heart of nostalgic good times, and carefully placing it within the body of another song to create something which is, "New," but has as the main source of its lifeblood something older.

"Might Be"

Luke Nasty's song, "Might Be," samples an artist known as, "Anderson .Pakk," who himself sampled, "Who Can I Run To?" by Xscape and released in the wonderful era of Hip-Hop and RnB that we call, "The 90's," or 1995, to be exact. On, "Might Be," Luke Nasty has that throbbing baseline and catchy synth play as he talks about smoking cannbais and having sex with a lovely lady (who also smokes the stuff and does a good job rolling blunts). It isn't an especially deep song with lyricism I would say is average-at-best, but man if I don't love the song thanks to how catchy it is, and yes, how it takes my nostalgia for that era of, "Xscape," and their sound. Luke continues to take something old and make it new-ish again with his song, "OTW," too, which I'll touch on next.

"OTW"

"OTW," stands for, "On The Way," and is a song where Luke Nasty talks about how he is on his way to drive over to a lady's house to have sex with her (you may be noticing a theme in Luke Nasty's music). This song takes the jam, "Whatever you Want," by the trio known as, "Tony! Toni! Toné!" and use the sample throughout the whole song (as with, "Might Be,") to create something that is less of a sample, but not quite a remix--it is just something new and strange yet familiar and comforting. Again, the lyrics Luke Nasty spits may be simply passable, but with his amazing use of weaponized nostalgia he has already created two songs I always enjoy hearing on the radio or streaming from my computer/iPhone.

Dr. Luke Nasty

Literal surgery tools I'm using as a metaphor for Luke Nasty's song-surgery.

Luke Nasty has such skill with his scalpel at cutting-out the best parts of other songs and transplanting them into his own he should be called Dr. Luke Nasty. He may need to worry about becoming known solely as an artist who does this, as I imagine he doesn't want to be pigeonholed. After all, for some time Kanye West was thought of as the guy who sped-up old song-samples until he started making different-sounding music (and also became known as a bit of a loudmouth, but I still love him). I am interested to see what Luke Nasty does in the future musically and wonder if he will continue his surgical-procedures with old song-samples or not. We shall see!