Cloonee's 'I Rhyme Quick': Tech House Meets Golden Era Rap

When a track circulates in DJ sets for eighteen months before getting an official release, either the label situation is complicated or the producer is waiting for exactly the right moment. In Cloonee's case, both may apply — because "I Rhyme Quick" has just landed on Def Jam, which is about as far from the usual underground pipeline as a tech house record can get.

The Track Itself: What Cloonee Did With Nice & Smooth

The source material is "Sometimes I Rhyme Slow" by Nice & Smooth, a 1991 hip-hop record that already had its own musical intelligence going — a groove-forward production that sat slightly apart from the era's harder boom-bap. Cloonee has taken that and sped the vocal up, repositioned it as a recurring hook rather than a verse structure, and built a proper tech house frame around it. The bass is thumping, the drums are punchy and tight, and the breakdown leans into the full vocal before the drop lands hard.

The most interesting production choice is the triple-loop of "no static, got an automatic" before the payoff line "too much of anything makes you an addict." That sort of cumulative tension is a classic build mechanic, but Cloonee deploys it with enough space in the arrangement that it doesn't feel mechanical. When the track lands, it earns it.

Eighteen Months in the Bag: Why the Delay Matters

The fact that Cloonee had been playing this in sets since 2024 tells you something about how the track functions in a room. Dancefloor-tested, crowd-proven records that get held back usually go one of two ways: they either overpromise and underdeliver on first listen, or they arrive exactly as potent as their reputation suggested. "I Rhyme Quick" falls firmly into the second camp — the ID-chasing and bootleg edits floating around only built appetite for the real thing.

The delay also speaks to the licensing reality. Sampling a recognisable hip-hop vocal from a catalogued major-label track isn't a fast clearance. The Def Jam imprint on the release is almost certainly the direct result of those negotiations finding their home at the label that manages the Nice & Smooth legacy — and it makes perfect sense that the deal would route there rather than to a house imprint.

What It Means When a Tech House Record Lands on Def Jam

Def Jam's catalogue runs from LL Cool J to Jay-Z, Rick Ross to Kanye West. Having a tech house record in that library is genuinely novel. It raises a real question about whether this is an isolated clearance deal or an early signal that the label sees commercial value in the underground market more broadly. Given tech house's streaming and live-events numbers over the last few years, that reading isn't implausible.

For listeners, the Def Jam credit gives the Nice & Smooth interpolation added cultural weight. This isn't a producer sampling a record for vibe — it's a formally licensed rework that treats Golden Era hip-hop and contemporary tech house as part of the same lineage. Whether that argument holds on the dancefloor is ultimately what matters, and the response in clubs has been consistent: it holds. Cloonee's Beatport catalogue already showed he could move between peak-time bangers and more textured productions; "I Rhyme Quick" is one of the most distinctive things he's put his name to.

Cloonee's 2026 Form

This release arrives in the middle of one of the stronger years Cloonee has put together. Earlier in 2026, he contributed to Prospa's debut album Free Your Mind on CircoLoco Records — appearing on the title track, which climbed into the UK Singles Chart top 20. Before that, "One Question" and "XTC" had both found their way into tech house charts and DJ sets with regularity. The combination of consistent club cuts and a growing mainstream profile is a balancing act not every underground house producer manages cleanly; Cloonee has been navigating it without obviously sacrificing either audience.

"I Rhyme Quick" fits neatly into this trajectory. It's peak-time without being lowest-common-denominator, clever without being clever for its own sake. The combination of Nice & Smooth's cool and Cloonee's production instincts makes for a record that should hold up well beyond a single season.

It's been a long wait for the official release. On the evidence, it was worth it.