Aesop Rock – Black Hole Superette
Having come up in the East Coast underground rap scene of the late 90s and early 2000s, Aesop Rock has a reputation to uphold with Black Hole Superette
Aesop Rock’s latest album, Black Hole Superette, brings together 18 tracks under a loosely defined theme of a convenience store. Tracks aren’t focused on the idea of a store itself but rather songs relate to items, experiences, and narratives that are plucked from the shelves of Rock's mind.
Some tracks lean into this more than others with Steel Wool centering around the concept of the narrator’s skin being as tough as metal, delivered on top of a slow boom bap drumbeat. Other tracks distance themselves from the central theme: John Something has Aesop Rock describe an artist lecture he attended at school in which the artist spoke about the 1996 boxing documentary When We Were Kings instead of his work; Snail Zero is a similarly quirky story about Rock’s unwillingness to remove the sea snails that are rapidly multiplying in his girlfriend's fish tank.
For what Black Hole Superette offers in entertaining slices of life, it also contains a number of tracks which should’ve been left on the cutting room floor. Songs like Costco and Send Help are full of meandering metaphors and vaguely connected imagery that make it difficult to determine the songs’ meaning. Exacerbating this issue, Rock rarely mixes up his flow, leading to several songs blending together into a lyrical mush.
Overall, Black Hole Superette contains a number of fun and novel songs delivered with a remarkably detailed writing style. What really lets the project down is a lack of variety across an overly long tracklist.
Listen to: Snail Zero, Bird School, Unbelievable Shenanigans