Your Old Droog

Ralph Perez: There are way to many internet rap sensations, and blog flavors of the month to keep the Fuck up with these days. So, when a theory went around that some new MC named Your Old Droog was really a Nas side project I stopped, then kept going because I love Nas, but was probably still drooling over Clippings.

Your Old Droog is NOT Nas, but he is what I fucking love about lyricism, which feels lost sometimes these days. Dudes got crazy wordplay, and one of those classic MC voices that stands out (Like Nas, G Rap and MF Doom have).

It's hard to pick stand outs when he's got so many darts on here. He's Butt fucking incredible!!

"Bad to the bone" opens with Droog stepping out like a seasoned vet crushing the guitar heavy sample. THIS fucking guy has such ill word play, and his delivery is worthy of GFK's cream wallys, or Nas' army jacket with the Uzi. Favorite line has got to be "From my point of view, lames will anoint a few so called rulers. But only after a joint or two/That's why it's mine, I'm mad known/that other rappers just another king that I had to dethrone".

God on a glider, "Nutty Bars" is bonkers man. "ill mush your wig,expose your phony persona. And if the toosh big on your baby mom I'm on her", or "and these internet thugs ain't doing a thing. Got caught with the Google chrome, now they in the Bing." Zeus's beard! This dude got bars.

"Loosey in the store with pennies" jumps out,not only because of shit like "never do I panic, guaranteed to show boat like the opening scenes of titanic", but it sets the heart of Droog's album with the opening phrase "wanna know my plan B? No plan b. That one bar can get you right like a xanny".

He's hungry fuckers, watch your plates.

"On the news", his stalker love letter to a news anchor is on some weird shit, and it's why i'm really glad i finally stopped to check his record out. Favorite line "Came to round it out with a golden quote. They put the battery in my back and taped it like an old remote. Turned to the channel had you on, pass some of that strong. Got me to put down my feelings in song".

This is some trifecta of wordplay, voice, delivery, weirdness and NY street talk that gives me rap-gasms yo. Your Old Droog for me, gets placed in the same lane as MF Doom in my extreme excitement in hearing anything he does going forward.

Employee: This year personally sucked for a plethora of reasons; among the least of them was a wanting for words. Appellation is all-encompassing in 2014: Rap Music, Cable News, Talk Radio, Daytime Dishes, Nighttime Gabfests, Burgeoning Podcasts. Your Old Droog is on a pronounced yo-yo of a frequency beaming from a deceptively dwarf-like planet. It's like Dennis Quaid jawing to Jim Caviezel, but stranger because Your Old Droog isn't even my dad, yo.

Utilizing argot in a surgical manner not unlike that of Denzel Washington with a sawed off, double barrel shotgun aiming at a helplessly outmatched Ethan Hawke in "Training Day", Your Old Droog's self-titled debut is a precise, parabolic prism that cuts harder than James Cann's perpetually erect Diamond Nipples (seriously: duke's nipples are ROCK HARD in every film he's starred in during the course of his adult life).

A nihilistic non sequitur or metaphor-on-methamphetamines: Your Old Droog is never not on hit. Hard-charging, hand-wringing headnodders are Y.O.D.'s strongest of his strong suits: "Nutty Bars", "Loosie In The Store With Pennies", "Droog's Anthem", and "Gunsmoke Cologne" scream NYC at its finest and most furious. If Y.O.D.'s pen prowess isn't enough proof of his potency, he also had a heavy hand in producing his HEAVY FLOW premiere.

While I share an infatuation with synthesizers that would probably wind up in the form of multiple temporary restraining orders were they human beings, I can't tell you what a breath of uncontaminated air it is to truncate down as opposed to turnin' up. Cliche though it may be the crackling of a slimy guitar is and always will be superior to the blare of a boring, bloated preset. The end result is an audio aesthetic that is as audacious as its vocal prognosticator.

At a mere twenty-five-years-of-age Your Old Droog has an abundance of time to stretch his legs and rack up an impressive catalog. Hearing him over any one of NYC's nest of ace producers is hardly a leap. And though production has seemingly been at the forefront of Rap Yore & Popularity for a spell, it's duck soup to accept the notion that bar-busting baritones in the vein of Y.O.D. are starting to reverse that trend. A front-runner for the year's best...no doubt.