Aesop Rock

It makes me smile if it sounds dope.

Aesop Rock is one of the greatest wordsmiths of his generation. And he’s unlike any other rapper you’ve ever heard.

The New York-born rapper has been at the forefront of the underground/alternative rap scene for nearly thirty years. And I’ve been a fan for nearly twenty of those.

He released his first album, Music for Earthworms, in 1997 and has released a new album every few years since. My introduction was 2007’s None Shall Pass. After that first discovery, I dove into his back catalogue and have kept up with his many releases since.

So, what draws me into Aesop Rock so much?

Well, first things first. He’s an incredible rapper. He’s a technical and precise performer (though he hasn’t actually performed live in years) and he’s an even better writer.

His lyrics and rhymes are often incredibly dense, sometimes to the point that the songs become almost impenetrable. He also has an impressive amount of variety in his songs. There’s even an article on The Pudding which analyzes rappers to see who has the largest vocabulary. Aesop Rock is well and truly ahead of every one of his peers. Along with his dizzying word variety and rhyme schemes, he uses metaphor and allegory liberally to tell his stories.

It’s one thing to use a bunch of cool words — many rappers use complex wordplay that amounts to very little, leading them to be called ‘lyrical miracle’ rappers, insinuating they’re just rhyming for the sake of rhyming — but it’s a whole other thing to use those words to tell coherent, engaging and impactful stories.

And the stories are what separates Aes from almost every other rapper out there.

After all, how many other rappers do you know with a song about a pirate falling in love with a mermaid? Or a dog saving a toddler from drowning? Or a children’s song about roadworks? Or surprize snails appearing in his fish tank? Or his therapist prescribed kitten? Or about his neighbour finding mushrooms growing in his car? Or that time he found a meth-addled man in his apartment?

I could go on. But you get the point.

And of course, this isn’t to say he’s entirely unique. There are countless rappers who’ve sung (rapped?) about unique, interesting things. MF DOOM, Kool Keith, Action Bronson, to name just a few, and there are many, many more.

But none are as consistently off-kilter, interesting and personal as Aes.

And none of them have impacted me as much personally.

Aesop Rock released his latest album recently (Blackhole Superette - it’s great), and it’s got me returning to his back catalogue. And doing so has made me realize just how influential he has been on my life.

It’s funny how that can happen. There can be someone, or something, in your life that exerts a subtle influence that can’t really be felt or noticed until years later.

That’s me and Aes.

As I said, Aesop Rock’s lyrics are dense and often impenetrable. And I don’t really sit there reading along with the lyrics or anything. Often it just makes me smile ‘cause it sounds dope (that’s a reference to an Aesop Rock lyric, which we’ll get to later). So I just let them wash over me. Like the first Aes song I fell in love with, ‘None Shall Pass’.

Flash that buttery gold
Jittery zeitgeist, wither by the watering hole, what a patrol
What are we to Heart Huckabee, art fuckery suddenly
Not enough young in his lung for the water wings
Colorfully vulgar poacher, out of mulch
Like, "I'ma pull the pulse out a soldier and bolt"

I don’t have a single solitary clue what the fuck Aes is talking about there.

But it does indeed sound dope. There’s a rhythm and pop to the words that just scratches an itch in my brain.

Then on some songs he’s pretty straight forward and it doesn’t really require much digging to unearth the meaning.

‘Rings’ from The Impossible Kid is one of those songs.

Used to draw
Hard to admit that I used to draw
Portraiture and the human form
Doodle of a two-headed unicorn—it was soothing
Movin' his arm in a fusion
Of man-made tools and a muse from beyond
Even if it went beautifully wrong
It was tangible truth for a youth who refused to belong

The first time this song really landed for me. I had heard the song many times before, but for some reason the lyrics didn’t penetrate. Until one day when I was listening to it as I walked to catch a train. And that opening line — “Used to draw… Hard to admit that I used to draw.” — hit me like a truck. Because that was me. I used to draw. And it was hard to admit that I used to draw. I drew a lot when I was younger. Then, in my twenties, it faded away. I was drawing like once a year. I was focused on acting. On writing. On learning how to be an adult human being (still a work in progress).

And so, I decided to remedy that. I started drawing again.

Or there’s the chorus from ‘Daylight’, one of his most popular songs from his album Labor Days.

All I ever wanted was to pick apart the day
Put the pieces back together my way

Which almost perfectly described my desires for my life in my twenties, as I was trying to carve out my place in the world.

This is also reflected in the hook from ‘9-5ers Anthem’, also off Labor Days, which isn’t even a rhyming chorus or anything. It’s basically a call to action or a proclamation.

Now we the American working population
Hate the fact that eight hours a day
Is wasted on chasing the dream of someone that isn't us
And we may not hate our jobs
But we hate jobs in general
That don't have to do with fighting our own causes.
We the American working population
Hate the nine-to-five day-in day-out
When we'd rather be supporting ourselves
By being paid to perfect the pastimes
That we have harbored based solely on the fact
That it makes us smile if it sounds dope.

That still describes my general attitude to jobs. And “work”. And that final line “That it makes us smile if it sounds dope” really impacted me, which is why I’ve referenced it several times already. It made me realize and accept that the main motivator for me to pursue things like acting, drawing, and writing was that it made me smile when it felt good. And that’s okay. More than okay. It’s at the heart of who I am. And why I’m here.

Then there’s the Aesop passages that make me laugh. He often has a dry, observational style to his humour. He manages to highlight so many of the mundane absurdities of life, and there’s something about coupling that humorous tone with intricate rhyme schemes in a hip hop song that just tickles me.

Like this passage from ‘Lotta Years’ from The Impossible Kid.

The girl that work down at the local juice place
Got a head full of dreadlocks down to her waist
I watched her add the spinach to the ginger to the grapes
My hair was underwhelming, my juice was fucking great
Some lady orders Maca, compliments the locks
She asked how many years it took the girl to grow the crop
"It took a lot of years and then eventually I cut 'em, kept 'em
Reattach 'em anytime I want 'em"
… My mind's fucking blown
The future is amazing, I feel so fucking old
I bet you clone your pets and ride a hover-board to work
I used a folding map to find the juice place in the first
These kids are running wild, I'm still recovering from church
You should have seen me in the 90s, I could ollie up a curb
You should have seen me in the 80s,
I was bumping New Edition, dragging acne in Hades.

I chuckled every time I hear that verse. I can picture him, standing in the juice place, befuddled and bewildered, feeling like an old man who was once cool, but is now out of touch. But it’s all so silly. Comments on his underwhelming hair, this girl with the detachable dreads, his nostalgia over ollying up curbs. I love it.

Or there’s this one about his older brother on ‘Blood Sandwich’.

It's real youth in the palm of your hand
When your mom thinks Satan is involved in a band
We were buried in the Village Voice, checking who was playing where
Pulled his head up out the paper, pushing out a single tear
Five words, like a beacon of light in the mist:
"Ministry live at the Ritz"
It was "Christ Has Risen" to Chris, three loaves, two fish
Miracle of mechanized loops on two-inch
Coming to a theater—he would be there in the flesh
Moms didn't say "No," but she didn't say "Yes"
Cop tickets—ah, the plot thickens
Countdown to ultimate concert experience
Ma still wary: "And why are they called Ministry?
Are they a cult?" Maybe she would probably investigate
Bought a mag with an Al Jourgensen interview
Read a couple sentences, glanced at a pic or two or three
That's all—no fair trial
Simply, "You will not be going to the show, and that's final!"
What occurred next were the top of the lungs
Of a son who, unjustly, had lost what he loved
In a moment that would transcend anger to high art
Said, "This is something I am willing to die for!"
Can you even imagine?
A death in the fam from industrial fandom?
Anyway, no body count, no concert
And Chris kicked rocks in his mismatched Converse

There’s just something about that line, “Can you even imagine, a death in the fam, from industrial fandom? Anyway…” that makes me smile every time I think of it. It’s funny, but also touching in a nostalgic way. It makes me think back to being a teenager, when things like that — going to a concert to see your favorite band — really did feel like a matter of life and death. Which is, obviously, absurd… but also strangely heart-warming.

Which leads me to the Aesop Rock verses and songs that I find truly touching and moving.

Like one of my absolute favourites, ‘Ruby 81’ from Skelethon.

(This is the entire song, btw)

July 4th, 1981
Candles of a Roman ilk
Unloaded from a Chevy truck
Into the home her folks had built
Patio was charcoals and extended fam in folding chairs
Safely arced around the yard to focus on the smoking flares
Couple cousins, uncles, aunts
Mostly grown-ups, couple brats
Baby Ruby's only two, she's too close to the jumping jacks
Mommy scoops her to the house, buckles up the booster seat
Rolls her to the storm door, let her long for all the lunacy
Telephone distracting Mom, Ruby wriggles out her strap
Fingers push the plexiglass, she's off into the sour patch
Past the pyrotechnics, undetected and invisible
Woke the sleeping beagle skipping toward the kidney swimming pool
Off into the yawning blue, the splash would mum the rocketships
Ruby's lungs were filling by the time her kin were cognizant
Many sprung and sprinted down, all arrive belated but
The beast she had earlier stirred had been alert since waking up
Canine let his gainer fly, water-top commotion grow
Howling guests assume the cloven hooves had come to do-si-do
Frenzied and congested deck, part to let the others see
Soggy beagle gently dragging Ruby in his yellow teeth
Laid the tiny body in the sun before her father‘s feet
When she choked the liquid through her bluish lips he dropped his knee
Help the air to reconvene, towel his shaking Ruby off
EMT confirm the save, everybody say "Good dog!"

Every single time I hear Aes say “Good dog!” it makes me tear up. And I can’t even really explain why. It just hits me. Every damn time.

Part of it, I’m sure, is the slowly building music through the track. Which is something I haven’t even mentioned. The production on Aesop Rock’s song is often as idiosyncratic as the lyrics.

In the early days he worked very frequently with the producer Blockhead, while also getting tracks made by other high profile New York underground figures like El-P. But for the last decade or so — aside from specific collaborations like Malibu Ken with producer TOBACCO — Aesop Rock has produced all his own beats. So he’s not just an almost impossibly skilled writer and performer, he’s also an incredible musician in his own right.

I could go on, and I kind of want to, but I think I’ll wrap it up with one more verse.

This is the final verse from ‘No Regrets’, once again from Labor Days, and it’s one of his songs that has had the biggest impact on me.

It tells the story of Lucy. An artist. In the first verse she’s a child, drawing with chalk on the streets. She’s looked at as strange by her neighbours and peers. Impenetrable. An odd little child. She gets bullied. People don’t understand her. But she doesn’t care. She just draws.

The second verse follows her into adulthood. She’s 37, living alone, in a basement apartment. Drawing with charcoal. She has a boyfriend, Rico, but he’s a loner artist too. So they only see each other once a week or so. And they like it that way. Still, people don’t understand. And she’s fine with that. She just continued to draw.

Then, the final verse.

Lucy was 87, upon her death bed
At the senior home, where she had previously checked in
Traded in the locks and clips for a head rest
Traded in the charcoal sticks for arthritis, it had to happen
And she drew no more, just sat and watched the dawn
Had a television in the room that she'd never turned on
Lucy pinned up a life's worth of pictures on the wall
And sat and smiled, looked each one over, just to laugh at it all
No Rico, he had passed about 5 years back
So the visiting hours pulled in a big flock of nothing
She'd never spoken once throughout the spanning of her life
Until the day she leaned forward, grinned and pulled the nurse aside
And she said, "Look, I've never had a dream in my life
Because a dream is what you wanna do, but still haven't pursued
I knew what I wanted and did it till it was done
So I've been the dream that I wanted to be since day one!"
Well! The nurse jumped back
She'd never heard Lucy even talk, especially words like that
She walked over to the door and pulled it closed behind
Then Lucy blew a kiss to each one of her pictures and she died.

I don’t know about you, but that shit touches my core. As an artist myself, it soothes me and makes me know that someone else gets it.

Aes gets it.

Especially coupled with the chorus that separates every verse in that song.

You can dream a little dream or
You can live a little dream
I'd rather live it,
'Cause dreamers always chase but never get it.

And that’s what makes Aesop Rock so special to me.

Yes, his wordplay is complex, bordering on impenetrable (for every song I’ve listed here, there’s multiple Aes songs I’ve listened to for years and have NO idea what they’re about), but the reward for unpacking them can be literally life changing.

He writes songs and stories that are personal, but universal. The specificity speaks to me. And the insight into another creative mind fuels me.

There are so many other songs and lyrics I want to highlight, but I’ll resist the urge.

I’ll just leave you with the closing lyrics from ‘Get Out of the Car’, which is a song about Aes’s grief from the loss of his best friend Camu Tao. It’s a song I’ve only recently started to connect to, and how it relates to my own grief journey.

Here go the hindsight:
Eight years been one long blindside
I could pinpoint seven more turns that occurred
'cause he never really healed from the first
Oh, what a world, any hack is a myth
Any dap is a joke, any map is a trick
Any graph is a hoax, ease on down
I'm burning up, I'm bleeding out
Knowing ain't half the battle
That's a bullshit quip written by some asshole
You can own what you are and still sit around stoned in your car
Not doing shit, halfway to nil
Cranky and waiting for a boss key and hat full of bills
… Get out the car, Aes

I’m trying, Aes.

I’m trying.