The dystopia of utopia: underground rap legend Aesop Rock takes on late stage capitalism.
Aesop Rock is not one of those who said everything in 30 minutes of the album. Or think they do. One of his tracks also lasts four minutes rather than two. You should plan on spending a good hour with him to really immerse yourself. The rapper and producer from Long Island has been a central figure in the hip-hop underground for almost 30 years, creating a new world, a new cosmos with every new album.
Are these already concept albums? Perhaps. But Aesop Rock is more about the concept of “world building”. Each album creates its own world, a context of meaning in which the narratives of the individual tracks unfold. So now INTEGRATED TECH SOLUTIONS. It goes into the now, into a world in the late stages of capitalism, in which empty corporate speak and parasitic business models rule.
Sometimes retrofuturistic, sometimes jazzy, sometimes dark
The first single “Mindful Solutionism” already shows the journey: from the discovery of fire two and a half million years ago, Aesop Rock raps through the development of humanity – and what wrong turns we have taken towards atomic bombs, landmines and climate destruction. “We cannot be trusted with the stuff that we come up with,” he shouts, almost desperately. The cryptic, ambiguous that was Aesop Rock? Is still there. But that’s not all: Previously often criticized for using pompous, mannerist language, Aes is clearer here than perhaps ever before.
He still remains true to his style of blowing the listener away with hyperactive torrents of words. On 18 tracks, Aesop Rock experiments with a wide variety of sound worlds, sometimes retro-futuristic, sometimes jazzy, sometimes dark, but held together by his very own rap style. The world is ending, but in the dystopia of the present we can at least warm ourselves by the glowing fire of Aesop Rock’s bars. And that is at least something.