Remember back in the day(yes, Im old) when you would unwrap the cellophane plastic off the jewel case, that new tape smell….aaaah, and you turn on your AIWA sound system, pop the tape in, and you listen to that one joint that gives you goosebumps?? Yeah man…the good ol’ days.
Nowadays, it’s those kind of emotions that are few and far in-between, due mostly, to the rapid change of media. The cassette is now a dinosaur medium, and CD’s are close behind…So that excitement, the anticipation, of getting home to crack open a new album is now replaced with instant gratification of Spotify, and Soundcloud. Music streaming is the new age.
Now, this is not to say that because the medium is gone, the quality of music that helped sparked those feelings, the witty bars over gritty beats, the goosebumps that formed on your arms after hearing an amazing track, is gone. Quite the contrary…..Enter Your Old Droog’s Packs, his new album recreated that emotion for me, the same one I felt in 93, when I first popped open Enter the Wu or Midnight Maurauders.
The sophomore album from the South Brooklynite, known as Your Old Droog, is what brought me back to the light. Hip Hop is truly “Not Dead” when you listen to “Grandma’s Hips” Droog proclaims;
“Come for me/ It’ll be extra slim..Like a skinny MF Doom/it’ll be extra Grimm”
See! That’s what I’m talking about, the goosebump effect. Hearing some witty bars that’ll make you make Cosby faces.
Your Old Droog doesn’t stop there, he teams up with another emcee, that I myself have been a fan and always promoted, out of Chicago, Chris Crack. “Just An Interlude” is a dope mid-album track that just puts you in a dream of dirty NY apartments and weed smoke, contemplating life….
So many dope joints on this project that I think Droog solidified that he’s not a fly by night fluke…Dude’s lyricism is no joke, his word play is seriously top league. So I get tired that people still say that he sounds like Nas, and he’s trying to bite a style that is not his. Ludacris I tell you Ludacris!!!(The Adjective, Not the Rapper).
EL RTNC(Producer) did an amazing job creating the soundscapes for Droog’s second opus. The horns, harps, the snares, trumpets, all the sounds mesh well together and make the album very cohesive…you dont get a tune that comes out of left field that sometimes will throw an album off….
All I can say is this is one of the projects that made me want to get back into blogging, and if you don’t think that Droog’s Packs is not a contender for album of the year….then you might need …
HELP!
Salute.
Cop the album here