Your Old Droog Recruits Quelle Chris, RUFF MERCY & Matt Lubansky for "Transportation" Video Clips (Mongoloid Banks/Nature Sounds)
Your Old Droog's newly-minted Bandcamp page lacks much in lieu of a typical Artist Bio/Release Description and only contains a simple proclamation: "Y.O.D. is the best." Droog has come a long way from his early days as a Ukrainian-American immigrant, whom most people initially thought was an alter-ego of Nas; early on in his career, Your Old Droog received stamps-of-approval from both Sean Price & Prodigy (Mobb Deep,) as well as Sascha Jenkins, Edan, Homeboy Sandman, and countless others. I can recall the mass amounts of hype, mystery, and sheer confusion surrounding 2014's self-released Your Old Droog EP/LP, but my personal favorite Droog release was 2015's KINISON EP with its Rock "N" Roll & Stand Up Comedy-indebted edge. Your Old Droog's second proper studio full-length, PACKS, was released in early 2017 and boasts collaborations with Heems AKA Himanshu (Swet Shop Boys,) Danny Brown, Chris Crack, Wiki, Edan, and comedian Anthony Jeselnik, as well as The Purist, RTNC, 88-Keys, and The Alchemist on the production tip. For the remainder of 2017, Droog released a series of extremely strong non-album singles, which were later re-collected on Daupe!'s appropriately-titled "Looseys" comp. Y.O.D. and his "Help" collaborator Wiki once again teamed up for a collaborative 2017 EP entitled What Happened to Fire? with production work throughout from Black Milk, RTNC & Droog himself, Statik Selektah, !llmind, araabMUZIK, and Tony Seltzer.
Earlier this year, Your Old Droog & Edan returned, seemingly out of NOWHERE, with the first episode in what appears to be an ongoing series fittingly dubbed "Witch In The Kitchen." Seated in what appears to be Edan's kitchen, alongside his record collection, Droog effortless freestyles atop a sample culled directly from Chrome, Smoke & BBQ: The ZZ Top CD Box Set, namely, "Cheap Sunglasses" (2003 Remaster.) Just a matter of days later, also, completely unannounced—are you starting to notice a pattern here?—Y.O.D. self-released his third proper full-length, It Wasn't Even Close, on Gogul Mogul/Mongoloid Banks. Executive Produced by ever-mysterious emcee Mach Hommy, It Wasn't Even Close features collaborations with heavyweights such as DOOM, Daringer, Evidence, Sadhugold, Mono En Stereo FKA RTNC, Roc Marciano, Ohbliv, and more. Now, less than two months after It Wasn't Even Close, Droog has once again returned with his fourth full-length, Transportation, on what appears to be his own imprint, Mongoloid Banks in conjunction with Nature Sounds. Not counting producers, Transportation is a largely featureless affair, aside from two Bonus Tracks boasting rhymes from Quelle Chris & Wiki. Interestingly enough, a double-music video for Transportation's "The Cheese" & "Under The Train (Transporting,)" directed by Matt Lubansky and animated by RUFF MERCY, was quietly unleashed a matter of days after It Wasn't Even Close. Now, there's, also, a Transportation Animated Short or "BASTARDS OF THE UNIVERSE;" it was, amazingly, fully "illustrated, animated, colored, written, voiced, and directed by ya boy, @quellechrist." Both Your Old Droog's It Wasn't Even Close & Transportation are now available from Gogul Mogul, Mongoloid Banks & Nature Sounds, respectively.