— Brooklyn-by-way-of-Ukraine rapper Your Old Droog has dropped a new album, Bread & Butter, via Nature Sounds Music.
The album features Flying Lotus, Evidence, Oddisee, Masta Ace, South African star A-Reece and Georgia Anne Muldrow, among others, with production from Flying Lotus, Conductor Williams and more. The title comes from a family story: Droog’s household, newly arrived from Ukraine with more taste than money, spreading caviar thin across ordinary bread. It’s the kind of detail that could curdle into hard-luck mythology in a lesser writer’s hands. Instead, he makes it a thesis, turning scarcity into abundance. Across the 12 tracks, Droog moves between the turbulence of a rap career, the long shadow of a Brooklyn childhood and the occasional pleasure of dispatching an unworthy challenger. The album includes previously released tracks “I Don’t Care” ft. Flying Lotus and Georgia Anne Muldrow and “Pavlovian Effect.”
Droog also shares the video for album cut “Therapy,” animated by Oscar-nominated animator Bill Plympton, whose music video credits include Kanye West’s “Heard ‘Em Say” and “Weird Al” Yankovic’s “Don’t Download This Song.” Often called the King of Indie Animation, Plympton has spent four decades hand-drawing nearly every frame of his films outside the studio system. It’s a fitting partnership for Droog, who has built one of rap’s deepest catalogs the same way: independently, by hand, and with no shortcuts.
Listen to Bread & Butter and watch the “Therapy” music video here.