Time - Your Old Droog: Review

Your Old Droog

is a New York rapper who was once suspected of being a pseudonym of Nas, but has since established himself as one of the most acclaimed and prolific rappers in the rap underground. He kicked off 2021 with a pair of collaborative albums with Tha God Fahim and is keeping his pace up with one of his most fleshed out and thematically conceptual projects he's released in years in Time.

Review By Lav:

Droog is a fun artist to watch and one of my favorite voices in underground hip hop. He released a trio of studio albums in 2019 highlighted by the excellent Transportation and followed it up with a busy back half of 2020 and early 2021 which resulted in 3 more projects. I was excited to see Droog returning to solo work, especially with what seemed like one of his most fleshed out and thematically connected projects in a few years. Time totally lived up to my hype and delivers not only on Droog's classic formula of creative beat choices and lowkey delivery, but also seems him effectively expanding his sound while maintaining a reflective lyrical focus throughout. 

This record is full of highlights and the first one we heard came in the form of the Dropout Boogie single with MF DOOM.  This is the most up-tempo Droog song I've heard since Grandma Hips and man is he up to the task. The song is fittingly about the underwhelming experience Droog has with school over a scant core drum beat with all kinds of sounds overlaid. The track has a ridiculously smooth beat switch that leads into an MF DOOM feature where he absolutely goes off delivering one of the most energetic DOOM features I've heard in a long long time, the song is incredible. The song No Time has a similar outlook even after starting with some lowkey elements. Droog delivers on a multi-faceted hook that comes in line with a rise in the instrumental that all sounds great together. Wiki features on the track and while I've never been that big of a fan of him as a rapper he maintains the energy of the song and I think this is one of his better features that I've heard. 

The other two tracks on the record which pull features are also pretty big highlights. Field Of Dreams sees Droog teaming up with Aesop Rock for a reference heavy series of bars over a tight looped beat with orchestral instrumentation blended in. Elzhi closes the track off and while I'm not as crazy about his verse it does effectively transition the track into its outro. While all the individual parts of the song are pretty good I will say that posse cuts like these which have no hook and just present one verse after another can sometimes start to drag, this one isn't too bad though. One Move is a big time collaboration featuring Blu and Mick Jenkins over a Quelle Chris beat and all the talent melds together effectively. It has one of the best hooks on the record with Blu in particular delivering a killer performance. 

After the intro The Magic Watch is the first song here and sets the tone with a highly narrative track about a magic watch salesman who has the power to send you back in time to an earlier point in your life. The track paints the man as a mysterious character who returns to eerily close of each sequence. The song really does have a huge lyrical focus and sometimes that makes the flows less interesting but the story is really worth it. Speaking of reflection Please Listen To My Jew Tape sees Droog going through a hip hop standard as he describes the struggles of first getting noticed and the tough decision about whether or not to stay independent. He makes references to a ton of notable hip hop figures and for Droog fans, or just rap fans in general it is a fun trip down memory lane. 

Lost Time is all about missed opportunities looked at through retrospective storytelling. It's a pretty solid track with another smooth instrumental and good storytelling. A Hip Hop Lullaby sees further reflection centering on a story Droog remembers from a childhood train ride. It features a number of Droogisms starting with mentioning trains in reference to one of my favorite projects of his and taking shots at the public school system. While I'm not sure what about the song is intended to work as a lullaby it does still make for a great track and has one of the funnier Anthony Jeselnik skits as its outro. Madson Ave is the final big highlight and it has an incredibly unique beat that not many rappers would be willing to step up to, but Droog knocks down. He makes some moral observations on the track painting New York's underground as this very bleak morally bankrupt landscape with prime precision. There is a particularly memorable story about someone dying on the train tracks and everyone on the train only being worried about whether it would make them late that has stuck with me since I first heard the record. 

You're So Sick is certainly one of the most standout tracks here in the form of a hilariously vile seuxal track where Droog talks in absolutely excruciating detail about his sexual exploits and asking his girls to do all kinds of weird things with him. The song is so laugh out loud funny and Droog seems well aware of how strange it is. Even the vocal samples throughout the track seem like they're in on the joke. The Other Way has one of the most overpowering beats with a sort of wall of synths that tends to overpower the rest of the song. Droog is rapping with a pretty laid back demeanor so he can get a bit lost during some of its most instrumentally punchy points. Wrirdly enough my least favorite track here was released as a single with So High. The hook is extremely awkward with Droog kind of half singing the title over a saxophone it doesn't really even feel like it was written, just improvised. There are some great bars on the song and it sort of maintains the narrative energy but overall I'm less impressed with it. 

Time sees Droog doing everything well that he has always done well, and doing it consistently throughout. What elevates the project are all the little things in between starting with a diverse array of beats that make every song sound like a fresh new experience. The storytelling on this record is not only good in the individual songs but it works as a concept throughout and the tracks make a lot of sense together as a tracklist. Part of that can definitely be credited to comedian Anthony Jeselnik who has worked with Droog before and delivers a few absolutely hilarious radio and time themed interludes on the back end of many of the records longest songs. Time is my favorite Droog project since at least Transportation if not even further back to Packs and it is just about the best case scenario for when a new Droog record drops. 8/10

Album Cover Review By Tyler Judson:

This cover is a little too literal. I like the composition and the type they used but I'm not crazy about the creativity. It's just clocks. There could've been something more interesting done in the placement or color. Now crazy about it but it's not horrible either. 6/10

For more hip hop check out my review of Mach-Hommy's Pray For Haiti here