“It’s been a long time coming,” describes Your Old Droog on Tha YOD Fahim, his collaborative project with Tha God Fahim. It might take some time to notice his foreshadowing, but Droog takes a collective look at the abstract and the physical on his surprise drop, TIME.

Beginning more with the remedy of sound and whimsical nature of the youth, “Time Intro” are the moments of sunshine before the train departs from Far Rockaway, long past the D line into the Bronx, and what seems to be even outside the reach of the NJ Transit. No, TIME is a steam locomotive that takes the audience headfirst into a shocking look at how cruel time can really be.

With the first real track coming into form, “The Magic Watch” grabs the audience by the wrist and pulls them through a vortex of cadence. Describing on the hook, “Welcome to my time machine, I had this power ever since I was a teen. Try to explain it but they won’t know what it means, welcome to my time machine.”

As the verses begin to flood the frame, Your Old Droog quickly takes a narrative approach from the third person. Creating a story from fiction about a magic device that fits on the forearm, “The Magic Watch” effortlessly adapts to the string ensembles resembling a Sci-fi flick from the Golden Age of film. Awhlee grabs the ears with his production here, creating more mystery behind the delivery than any sort of understanding. The tone follows later into the piece “So High” where instead of intrigue, the mood is replaced with hazy, low-fixed eyes on the clear skies in the park.

Where samples of “Sweet Leaf” from Black Sabbath and the thoughts laced-weed flood the brain, “So High” quickly becomes this standard of mixing sound through the layers of dry-reed saxophones and the snaps of melodramatic synths. Droog takes these moments of utter reflection, poised in the crimson lens of youth and the first interaction with a spiked joint, leading him to describe, “After that day, your Droog was never the same again. Got dumb and still killed that whole summer with numbers like Wilt Chamberlain.”

Somehow even in his most personal recollections of time and space, Your Old Droog makes a story become relatable even when describing his lowest points, like on “You’re So Sick” where he becomes confessional to his most twisted sexual desires. Here, there is a double-edged sword of critique. On one hand, his dialect and approach is disgusting at times, illustrating, “Even titties get mundane, so one day I asked my bitch if I ‘could fuck her armpit,’ she looked at me and said, ‘You’re So Sick.’”

Then the analysis of the production comes in where a sample of “You’re so sick” plays over the instrumentation and alludes to the beauty of what got Your Old Droog into the personal spotlight in the first place. Each release has so much to dissect and even years after the initial release, TIME will continue to impress and catch the audience off guard.

Much like punching a clock, music can be present and require nearly no attention to hear but not actually listen to. Your Old Droog on TIME is required to be actively listened to with minimal distractions, so tap in and see what TIME is all about.

Listen To TIME Here!!! – BandCamp/Spotify/iTunes