Packs

After seemingly coming out of nowhere, Your Old set the internet aflame in 2014 with his self-titled debut EP, catching the attention of bloggers all over the web from New York Magazine’s Vulture to NahRight.com. Before long, conspiracy theories started and people began to posit that Droog was another older, legendary New York rapper in disguise. Profiled in The New Yorker, Droog (meaning “friend” in Russian) set the record straight about who he was: a twenty-something Ukrainian immigrant who fell in love with hip-hop when he arrived in South Brooklyn as a small child.

On his critically-acclaimed debut, the Your Old Droog LP, he vowed to “bring back storytelling” and now on his sophomore album, Packs, Droog delivers on that promise. In addition to the raw rhyme displays on songs like the Alchemist-produced, “Winston Red” Droog flexes his narrative muscles both comically (My Girl Is A Boy) and dramatically (G.K.A.C) on this new album. The reclusive Edan also produces and appears on the raucous posse cut Help with Ratking frontman Wiki. The three MC’s trade bars over an explosive beat that is as inspired psychedelic rock as it is hip-hop. Droog also shares mic duties with fellow rap iconoclasts Danny Brown (Grandma Hips) and Heems (Bangladesh) and, for good measure, comedian Anthony Jeselnik lends his dark humor to skits between songs.