When rap fans decry the atomization of the genre, they usually focus on its negative aftereffects: a lack of crossover superstars, an irrevocable split between Gen-Z internet kids and boom-bap old heads, and a surplus of ephemeral trends geared towards meaningless virality. But the emergence of solo auteurs like Aesop Rock is a reminder that there’s much to enjoy about this current, weird moment, too. The 48-year-old rapper is rooted in the underground “independent as fuck” of the late 1990s, and his music has more than a passing resemblance to skronk-y, turn-of-the-century New York experimentalists like Company Flow, Mike Ladd, and Sonic Sum. But over the course of nearly three decades of projects, Aesop Rock has refined that specific strand of rap style into an extreme version that’s wholly his own. His verses teem with words. His self-produced beats rattle with def beat percussion and eerie, hallucinatory melody. Every new album – he’s released four since 2020, beginning with his mesmerizing Spirit World Field Guide – sounds like an entry in a self-contained world of intellectual verbosity.
In Black Hole Superette, Aesop Rock relies on personification in his lyrics, switching between outrageous boasts and mordant self-deprecation. On “Checkers,” he brags, “I’m all of Alexandria’s information in aggregate.” For “Costco” which has frenetic scratching reminiscent of Q-Bert’s Wave Twisters, he claims, “I ain’t lyin’, the crib is an A/V club/Butterfly a piece of tech, liberate the weed crumbs.” He poses like a beat poet, albeit with enough B-boy savvy to spell out “effect” like Eric B & Rakim’s “Microphone Fiend” on “EWR – Terminal A, Gate 20.” He’s clearly a student of early hip-hop esotericists like Rammellzee and Kool Keith. “Short story: once I shook the RZA’s hand/Played it cool, but coulda yelled ‘I’m going to Disneyland’,” he raps on “Himalayan Yak Chew.”
For the uninitiated, Aesop Rock’s flood of words and phrasings might feel overwhelming, and easier to admire for the work he puts into writing them than the sonic pleasure he produces. When his songs have choruses, they tend to be deliciously inscrutable, like when he says, on “Movie Night,” ““What kind of dog is that? What kind of dog is that? That’s a mutt.” The few tracks with clearly definable themes are drolly amusing stories. “John Something” struggles to describe a guest to an art class he took in 1996 that obsessed over the Muhammad Ali documentary When We Were Kings; and “Snail Zero” finds him joking about an unexpected snail infestation in an aquarium he gifted to a girlfriend. Ultimately, Black Hole Superette is focused on minutiae as Aesop Rock dissects the world around him. But he also offers small moments of weariness that show he’s not just playing with language for its own sake. “Still mixing up the stolen with the homemade/Rapping for my life, and being difficult to locate,” says a rapper who hasn’t given a press interview in several years on “So Be It.” Hauntingly, he uses “Black Plums” to declare on the chorus, “I’m a particle, a minute quantity of matter/The least possible amount of data.”
At its best, Black Hole Superette elevates rap-for-rap’s-sake into an ennobled Zen practice. Its guests include Billy Woods and ELUCID of Armand Hammer on “1010 WINS,” and Woods is particularly game for Aesop Rock’s lyrical shadow play as he raps, “Luckily or unluckily for me, my brain discrete analgesics.” “So Be It” is anchored by Open Mike Eagle’s sung chorus, while “Charlie Horse” costars Homeboy Sandman and Lupe Fiasco. The contrast between Lupe and Aesop Rock is notable. The former fights against injustice, whether in national politics or the music industry, through deftly rendered yet sentimental opuses like last year’s Samurai. However, Aesop Rock finds joy in observing the strangeness of life, even as he remains aware of how brutal we can be towards one another. “Used to pair cereal and cartoons, I don’t know if there’s a better way/Now I’m going hungry in a war room, it’s similar but it is not the same,” he raps on “Steel Wool.”
Black Hole Superette doesn’t sound as bracingly conceptual as Spirit World Field Guide, and listeners familiar with Aesop Rock’s music may not hear a creative breakthrough on par with 2001’s Labor Days or 2007’s None Shall Pass. Still, it represents a musician adding fresh planks to an impressive creative streak. Much like the aforementioned Armand Hammer as well as younger acts such as Surf Gang and MIKE, he’s proof that while rap’s mainstream may be rottenly corrupt, there’s plenty of life at the genre’s margins, with self-styled creatives eager to refine their quirks into memorable art.
