Album Review: Your Old Droog - It Wasn't Even Close
While the evolution of hip-hop in the past few decades has largely brought its sound away from the downtrodden city streets and into mainstream chart acceptance, the more traditional rap styling of boom-bap continue to brew in the genre's most established boroughs. Case in point: Your Old Droog, a Brooklyn rapper keeping the hardcore hip-hop styling of the '90s alive through grimy wordplay and a dedicated aura of malevolence, to the point where his debut EP was rumoured to be merely a side project from Nas; a compliment, certainly, if a misguided one. But now fully established as an artist in his own right, It Wasn't Even Close is a delightful throwback to rap's most technically prosperous era, with all the advantages and disadvantages of the style out in full force.
Droog's distinctly old-school style is easy to get lost in when the speaker is as proficient as he; as the opener Gyros efficiently demonstrates, his experiences living on the streets gets turned into intricate wordplay like "I used to buck, put my gun in the holster, then step/A humble man turned boaster, just to bolster the rep". Even if the titular metaphor is made less than clear, the rapper's other allusions more than make up for it in wit, lines like "And nobody wanna hear your new shit, like spoilers" slipped in amidst a diss at those who can't understand his more obscure lyrics. Speaking of, the piano-heavy Tried By 13 (Vaclav Havel) gets its subtitle from the last president of Czechoslovakia, an impossibly obscure reference that gets its payoff in one single bar: "Get those checks out like Vaclav Havel". Such idiosyncratic quips are part of the genre's charm, and Droog is more than adept at employing them throughout his work.
Equally accomplished and proficient are the list of guest rappers contributing verses to It Wasn't Even Close, a commendable list of names famous both for their talent and for their similar reverence of hip-hop's legacy. Underground legend MF DOOM pops in on RST to ramble about "Baboon rappers, illegit mimes and muppets/Yucked up the game like pigswine McNuggets", his bass-heavy drawl a perfect match to the track's eerie string melody. Lil Ugly Mane's verbal acrobatics are as impressive as ever on Smores ("I juggle diagnosis, catatonic magic potions, static hopeless/Manic out of focus, knocked around by noxious oceans"), while Roc Marciano's ceaseless boasts on Chasing Ghosts nevertheless come off as impressive, if only due to his ability to build an entire verse around the same rhyme.
As far as the beats go, Droog finds a nice mix between classic '90s boom-bap and some more innovative production, if a bit more focused on the aesthetics of the former. Exceptions exist like Babushka, a shorter interlude packed front-to-back with quirky lyricism that pulls its clarinet-driven melody straight from a vaudeville production. Tracks like Bubble Hill sound similarly cheery, a noticeable contrast against some of the darker cuts like Funeral March (The Dirge) and Devil Springs. Haunted House Beat (Not A House Beat) uses distorted ambience and ominous background crooning to create one of the most sinister instrumentals present, yet lacks any actual rapping in lieu of a rushed, amateurish verse delivered as if over a phone in the song's last moments, to questionable effect. Evident on every track here is the effort put in to dutifully recreate the sounds of the genre's golden age, and in nearly every case the results are admirable.
That the album is so orthodox works to its detriment in some respects; Droog is far from the most charismatic rapper to touch a mic, and during a front-to-back listen his lack of fresh topics can begin to wear thin. That certain guests struggle to keep up in terms of flow does not help things either, particularly when Mach-Hommy already warrants criticism for opening Funeral March (The Dirge) with a slur that has no place in a rap record released in 2019. Between that, an oddly placed Bill Cosby skit at the end of World's About To End, and (most egregiously) an incredibly transphobic bar from Droog earlier on that song, the album balances out its delightfully retro aesthetic with an incredibly dated attitude towards lyrical content.
The comparison to Nas, while one that even Droog has acknowledged as a high compliment, is perhaps not the most succinct analogy for Droog's unique brand of hip-hop. Certainly his gritty, no-nonsense approach to rapping about life is familiar to fans of New York's illustrious rap lineage, but between the off-kilter references, peculiar rhyme schemes, and determination to avoid the public spotlight, his career and work evokes much stronger images of MF DOOM. It is only fitting, then, that the masked MC is one of Droog's many guests on It Wasn't Even Close, a surer sign than any of Droog's clear talent. This record does somewhat feel like merely another collection of homogeneous tracks exemplifying that fact, yet its consistency and quality are, at the end of the day, irrefutable.
Edit: well Droog blocked me on Twitter because apparently not being openly transphobic in 2019 is too much to ask of some people. In any case, this thing grew off me quite a bit, so if you were going to overlook overt bigotry and try this or Droog's other albums, don't bother; they're all pretty mediocre honestly.
6/10
Favourite Tracks: Smores, Chasing Ghosts, 90 From The Line
https://open.spotify.com/album/6MGpdaaOYQ7YGyK9GDAQZB