Your Old Droog – Bread & Butter

Nature Sounds

When New York rapper Your Old Droog dropped his breakthrough, self-titled record in 2014, a blogosphere conspiracy claimed that he was actually Nas performing under a new pseudonym. It was a pretty high compliment for a new-to-the-scene emcee, and the rumors grew more serious after the reveal a couple of years earlier that “Nasty” Nasir Jones had been using ghostwriters on his recent output. That mystery has never been completely solved, but the reality of Your Old Droog is that he was exactly who he claimed to be in his rhymes, just a rising artist from the hip-hop underground having fun doing what he does. In the last decade or so, Droog has been able to swiftly redirect listeners from the idea that he may be one of the genre’s ‘90s icons and instead create his own legacy as a well-respected but generally underrated artist.

His mid-2010s output, like Kinison (2015) and PACKS (2017), received strong critical praise off the heels of his scene entry and controversy, but even though some outlets stopped covering his work, Droog’s work never stopped. Bread & Butter, released this past Friday, is being advertised as his tenth LP, which would be an impressive feat on its own, but looking at his entire history of releases in the last twelve years, he’s probably inching closer to twenty albums worth of other material. Admittedly, it’s been a while since he’s been on my radar, but this latest record really feels like checking in with an old friend. Droog’s personality that made his initial releases so exciting hasn’t waned a bit, and he’s sounding more influenced by MF Doom or Black Thought these days than purely Nas.

The lyrics should be standout on any hip-hop record, but Droog has so many great quotables all over this thing. The opener “You Know How That Go” quickly made me laugh out loud alone in my car with the line, “Get you a greatest hits CD by The Beatles, Steve Miller Band ‘Fly Like An Eagle,’ Waka Flocka Seagulls,” that even had his ad-libber respond with an almost-too-quick-you’ll-miss-it, “What?” reaction. “Brighton Beach” criticizes other artists, saying “They make Hammer sound like Edgar Allen Poe.” In some ways, I like to believe that the gothique auteur really was the funky headhunter. That track features Evidence from Dilated Peoples, which is just one of the great hip-hop history pulls that Droog landed for this record. Masta Ace shares “Pavlovian Effect,” an excellent look at the TikTok generation of music fans and amateur “musicians,” then fellow indie rapper Oddisee jumps on the appropriately introspective “Thinking” that follows. Additionally, Tarriona “Tank” Ball, the titular vocalist of Tank And The Bangas, provides a killer hook on “I Appreciate You,” and “I Don’t Care” features production from none other than electronic and hip-hop wunderkind Flying Lotus.

It feels like bad writing to call anything “perfect,” and it feels far too premature to label a four-day-old, deep-career album, but Your Old Droog really shines in every aspect of Bread & Butter. The lyrics are there, the production is there, the features are there, the record isn’t obnoxiously long, but also isn’t so brief that it feels like it’s missing something. This is exactly what you’d want from a sharp underground rapper, and echoes how much fun his first few releases were too. Now it’s time for me to fill in the gaps and try to catch up… but first, I’m hitting repeat on this one again.