The acclaimed Long Island rapper Ian Matthias Bavitz returns with another rich pageant of ingeniously rapid rhymes, ideas, beats and riffs, this one themed around invisible forces that shape our lives and psyches, featuring guests Lupe Fiasco, Armand Hammer, Hanni El Khatib, Open Mike Eagle and Homeboy Sandman. It’s all in the details - Aesop Rock’s latest centres on the small, often overlooked moments and the everyday experiences that blur the lines between the real and the unreal, waking and sleeping, and, underpinned rippling sci-fi movie-style electronica, beats and samples, there are subjects here you simply aren’t likely to find in the lines of other hip-hop artists. From opener Secret Knock onwards, there’s a rapid-fire assault of stimulating delivery, a dystopian dreamlike vision of sights and sounds - “Out in the grid of infinity smells / Hooded figure, sniffing markers, chewing ginger, missing marbles /Cookie monsters with conflicting dharmas.” Or Checkers, which namechecks the album’s title and pictured store, with tongue-twisters that includes also reference the the library of Alexandria: “Anomaly in the algorithm, do the algebralculus/ I'm all of Alexandria's information in aggregate / Ruling elder giving you the hell that melt the valuables.” Like much of his material, it’s a track that really needs a listen with the lyrics also in front of you. The same goes for the stylishly funky Movie Night, with a near hallucinatory fusion of fine art and mythological reference melting into each other with dazzling wordplay (“Like Bargehaulers on the/ Volga drowning you in Lake Monet / Or maybe Sisyphus from Titian with a save the date/ For twistin' you the Francis Bacon way”). And there’s a running theme of living creatures across the album, including here the surreal: “My dog has blue eyes, cat grew supersized”. On Bird School, he describes the wonder and true ‘magic’ (compared to that of magicians) of thousands of swifts’ migration, murmuration then roosting in a big chimney stack - “Sorcery so absurd even Merlin had his phone out / 7:15 like a Sistine Chapel/ Wearing particle effects projected to seem natural/ Sunset, jaw-dropping avian performance/ The patterns are mathematics, the algorithm enormous.” And on Snail Zero, he describes the surprise appearance of those small creatures inside a small aquarium tank given to his girlfriend. They rapidly reproduce, firstly regarded as an invasive species, with the fish staring back at them, but then he declares: “I love those fish/ I love those snails, coexist,” which could be seen as a metaphor for mult-cultural society and immigration - obviously a hot topic in Trump’s repressive America. Charlie Horse, featuring Homeboy Sandman and Lupe Fiasco is another standout, as is Himalayan Yak Chew, opening with a vivid play on two idioms: “I ain't even got a single duck in a row/ But when I push off of the dock, fish jump in the boat”. The range is vast, from John Something, remembering an artist / lecturer in the 1990s who spent his entire, inspirational lesson talking not about fine art, but about the Ali boxing documentary When We Were Kings, to closer Unbelievable Shenanigans, which recounts a childhood pet hamster in the 1980s, and plays on the idea of selective memory. Cutely ingenious. The rappers’ rapper with a guilded reputation, why Aesop Rock is not a household name like, for example Kendrick Lamar, is in one reality, rather surprising, but perhaps he’s simply too cleverly idiosyncratic for that level of mainstream success. No doubt though, he’s the real deal. Out on Rhymesayers Entertainment
New to comment? It is quick and easy. You just need to login to Disqus once. All is explained in About/FAQs ...
Feel free to recommend more new songs and albums and comment below. You can also use the contact page, or find more on social media: Song Bar X, Song Bar Facebook. Song Bar YouTube, and Song Bar Instagram. Please subscribe, follow and share.
Song Bar is non-profit and is simply about sharing great music. We don’t do clickbait or advertisements. Please make any donation to help keep the Bar running: