The recently elected president and vice president of next year’s sophomore class council, Madden Osei and Paulos Muruts, are part of a group of freshmen that call themselves "R2Dubs."
In addition to their political successes, members of R2Dubs have become known among freshmen for their rapping and basketball exploits. Osei explained that the group's name R2Dubs comes from the second floor hallway on the west side of Randolph residence hall, where most of the group lives.
“We ball, rap and finesse,” said R2Dubs member Qsanet Tekie. “Finesse is basically navigating an obstacle to get to the other side.”
Most of R2Dubs’ fame on campus comes from its song “Strap to Strap,” a Duke basketball-themed remix of the Drake hit “Back to Back."
“We’ve taken that term and made it our own," said R2Dubs member Ben Ezroni. "When we say strapped we mean you’re skilled in some manner or you come equipped with some type of skill."
“Like when you get a good grade on your test, it’s like, I’m so strapped. Like when it comes to math, I’m the most strapped," Osei added.
Released March 3, the song spread quickly, getting nearly 5,000 plays on SoundCloud as well as shout-outs on Twitter from ESPN College GameDay and former Duke basketball star Justise Winslow.
“That was the first time we realized R2Dubs is a name on campus,” Ezroni said.
“Strap to Strap” was actually the second track produced by R2Dubs, following a song called “Super Bowl 50” by R2Dubs member and Denver Broncos fan Ray Pryor.
“Toward the end of the game, Ray started freestyling like we always do,” Osei said. “The next morning I got a text, ‘Madden, I invited you to a Google Doc.’”
After the success of the first song, the group decided to write another one for the March 5 Duke-North Carolina game at Cameron Indoor Stadium.
“It was a hall collaboration,” Pryor said. “I had the privilege of using my vocals.”
R2Dubs plans on releasing new tracks soon, Pryor added.
Members of R2Dubs said that since the release of “Strap to Strap,” they are often approached on campus by people they have never met asking about R2Dubs.
More recently, R2Dubs emerged as the victors of the intramural basketball B-League, winning the championship game in Cameron Indoor Stadium. The team became notorious for the large cheering sections that attended their games, invented chants, made signs and distracted opposing free throw shooters.
“Every game we played was a home game for us,” said R2Dubs member Lucas Saporito. “We had at least three times as many fans as every other team.”
Despite the group's current closeness, the hall’s residents did not bond very quickly at first.
“It was a week into school, we were all just chilling in our RA meeting, and we’re all just looking at each other thinking, 'There’s no way in hell I’m going to be friends with any of these people,'” Osei said.
But after connecting over their love of freestyle and evening basketball sessions in Brodie Gym, they quickly became inseparable.
“I feel like if a lot of people on campus weren’t scared of perceptions, a lot more groups like this would organically form,” Osei said. “We’re not special, it wasn’t like the stars aligned and we were put in this hall. We’re just a group of honest people that connected on a deeper level, it could happen with any other hall.”
Members of R2Dubs said they were dismayed to learn that housing blocks are limited to at most six students and attempted to find ways around this limitation, even considering an application to form a new selective living group. However, the group was told they could not form an SLG without at least one member who was a junior, Ezroni said.
As a result, R2Dubs will be split up next year.
“R2Dubs is the goal of what they want on East Campus. It’s a group of people who formed really close friendships and bonds organically, regardless of any differences,” Osei said. “We have 15 to 18 people, and because of the housing system, we’re forced to split into groups of six. We were all really taken aback by that.”
But R2Dubs members said the change in living arrangements will not affect their continued collaboration, whether it be in basketball, rapping or finessing.
“At this point R2Dubs doesn’t really stand for Randolph second floor west side. It’s an entity that’s growing. The ‘dubs’ part—at this point it means wins,” Ezroni said. “It started as a location but now we’re like a collective.”
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