Black Hole Superette

About

Aesop Rock does not talk or tour. He has not been on a stage since 2017 or been interviewed since 2020. Instead, what one of his generation’s most recognizable and masterful voices continues to do as he enters the back half of his forties is rap—four albums since 2020 alone, each filled with his most harrowing or humorous experiences and a seemingly dauntless supply of esoteric or obvious enthusiasm. When he bark, “Anomaly in the algorithm, do the algebralculus/I’m all of Alexandria’s information in aggregate” at the start of “Checker,” from his sprawling <i>Black Hole Superette</i>, it feels like he’s supplying a thesis statement of one—to be one of rap’s great outsider, his rhymes free to do whatever they want. Would anyone else dare, after all, to spend three minutes chronicling the exponential growth curve of the snail population inside the aquarium he bought for his girlfriend, as he does on the dazzling “Snail Zero”? Or to use his dog’s mutt status and his cat’s tumescence to form a sort of superhero posse, as on “Movie Night”? Aesop Rock gets from Francis Bacon to H Mart, from EPMD to shaving cream and Nautica parka, from the escape of his childhood hamster to the survival of Lahaina’s banyan tree in a matter of a few rhythmically intricate verses over spring-loaded beat. “Whole worth wrapped in what you can make with your bare hands/When sitting independent of the greater square dance,” he offers at one point, as if sneering at the music industry from the perfect privacy of his own studio. Indeed, no one else sounds or moves like Aesop Rock; on <i>Black Hole Superette</i>, he’s perhaps never sounded more like himself. .

via Apple Music

The Clerk says

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