Dug is an emcee and producer from Columbus, best known for his work alongside the artist known as Happy Tooth. With Happy Tooth releasing his own solo album, I’ve Been Meaning To Write The Meaning Of Life, in October, it’s only right that Dug release his own solo album now, Dog.

The overall sound of Dog is a blend of a lo-fi punk rock, twee, hip hop, and funk, played with the energy of a house party. If that sounds a little wild to you, good, because it is. It’s the type of wacky mix of things that seems like it shouldn’t work, but it does on Dog, in large part because it’s a genuine mix of where Dug is coming from as an artist. On a song like “Squirrel Cab,” you get a brilliant flip of a sample of Scala & Kolacky Brother’s cover of Radiohead’s “Creep,” while Dug investigates the philosophic nature of what it means to be a performer. On “Don’t Eat Me,” you get this crazy chopped up New Wave beat with self-deprecating humorous rhymes. “Captain Oblivious” takes us full into punk mode, with a screamed chorus with guitar and drums that could get a mosh pit going. You get some classic soulful boom bap on “Loungepants,” featuring Blake Ambrose, but then Dug brings in all of these nerdy references like Weird Al. It gets even nerdier on “I Know A Lot About Bats,” which almost sounds like it could have been featured on Animaniacs, as Dug goes in on his encyclopedic knowledge about the flying mammals. “No One’s Dancing,” which features Wade Wilson, Ryan Liptak, and Errol Hem, features these great Southern funk as they trade verses, but then transitions into this really infectious Blue-Eyed Soul chorus. It’s an album that takes a lot of bold chances, and the majority of them end up working because Dug is sure of who he is as an artist, he’s a talented emcee, and he’s got plenty of charisma, so he can sell something as ridiculous as a song about bats and make it work alongside some battle raps, party raps, and punk rock. The only song that doesn’t quite come together is “Your Peace,” in large part because he took a chance in putting an off-key sung chorus over a really well known Stevie Wonder sample that is just too jarring to get past. Given all the bold choices on this album, it’s a miss I can live with.

Dog is an album that doesn’t work on paper, but it absolutely does in practice. It’s weird, it’s nerdy, it’s punk, it’s lo-fi, it’s new wave, it’s hip hop, and it’s so much more. Most of all, though, it’s one hundred percent Dug.