Just in time for Hannukah, Jewish American rapper Your Old Droog has released “Suspects,” the first single from his next album after 2024’s “Movie.”
Produced by Edan, the song skillfully merges Droog’s skill as a storyteller with a sample from the rapper, producer and DJ’s bottomless library of 1960s and ‘70s pop obscurities. Though the pair recently toured together on behalf of “Movie” — with Edan as the rapper’s DJ — Droog tells Variety that he originally wrote the song three years ago during a particularly prolific period in his career.
“When I dropped ‘YOD Stewart,’ ‘YOD Wave’ [and] ‘Yodney Dangerfield,’ I was going to do something called ‘YOD Serling,’ which was going to be an homage to ‘The Twilight Zone’,” Droog says. “I did maybe four story songs with Edan, and they just never got recorded until now.”
Check out “Suspects” below:
Droog says that he holds on to a lot of his songs until he feels like the time, and project, is right to release them. “It’s just a case of finding the right home for it sonically and just knowing there’s a time,” he says. “Some of these things have to gestate to finally reach that point where they’re ready to go out into the world.
“It’s like the child that’s not leaving the nest yet,” he adds. “Some kids leave their mom’s house at 18, and some stick around to their thirties or mid-twenties. I’d compare it to that.”
Commemorating the holiday season, “Suspects” opens with “‘Twas the night before Christmas,” before offering a gritty, detailed chronicle of a robbery gone wrong. Even among the rapper’s many crate-digging collaborators — including Madlib, Harry Fraud and MF Doom — the collaboration between Droog and Edan feels especially complementary, creating vivid, novelistic imagery that evokes both the heyday of storytelling rap and even the 1960s period in which the original song was recorded. Choosing the song as a lead-off single immediately makes sense given Droog’s ambitions with his follow-up to “Movie.”
“I’m trying to make a classic body of work and something that stands the test of time that people can point to,” he says. “Right now I think I’m specializing in making the songs nobody else is going to make, and I think a great producer to do that with is Edan. When you mention somebody with eclectic style, that’s what we kind of connected over — just the love of a different type of music.”
Always strategic and yet slightly mysterious, Droog declined to reveal the name of the album, but says he plans to drop it “within the first four or five months of next year.” Does that mean more team-ups with Edan? “We got to finish up this other storytelling joint called ‘Ghost Writer.’ That’ll probably be on the album as well. But anything is possible,” he says. “I want to get him back rhyming on some stuff.”
Though Edan’s last solo album remains the 2005 psychedelic odyssey “Beauty and the Beat,” he’s only rapped occasionally, instead becoming a reliable producing collaborator for artists like Mr. Lif and Cut Chemist, and both performed and produced tracks on the team-up album “Humble Pi” with another New York rapper, Homeboy Sandman. Given Edan’s status as an underground luminary and the increasing acclaim generated for Droog around the release of “Movie,” it’s hard to say who is coaxing whom further into the spotlight. Either way, the rapper isn’t sitting around waiting to be anointed a star.
“Would I prefer to drop one record and tour for two years? I just think that’s not realistic for an independent artist in this climate,” he observes. “I have a bunch of records I want to release, but I’ve got to respect the albums that I create and give them time to be digested properly.”
As an independent artist, Droog recognizes that he’s still largely working outside the mainstream, but he’s determined to give listeners plenty of material to dig through — not only as he tests himself with different types of material, but as they discover his unique but eclectic gifts. “‘Suspects’ is something I really took my time on, so I want the listener to take their time. But also, people are still getting around to ‘Movie’’.”
“I think it’s all something that people will catch on to later, but that’s fine,” he says. “I don’t mind being ahead of the curve.”
