Aesop Rock, whose born name is Ian Matthias Bavitz, has carved out a seminal place in underground rap history during his 19-year career. Fans have long indulged in his introspective lyrics, distinct cadence and challenging song concepts, anxiously awaiting every one of his releases.
Since completing his sixth full-length album, “Skelethon,” back in 2012, the rapper has kept his fans mostly in the dark about his next solo project.
However, on Wednesday, this changed with Aesop announcing the release of his forthcoming LP, “The Impossible Kid,” due out April 29, while simultaneously releasing the album’s first single, “Rings.”
Aesop took to his Facebook this past Friday to give his thoughts on the upcoming record. He said “The Impossible Kid” attempts to highlight his “personality, sensibilities, humor and ideas” in order to present the rapper’s “conversational self.”
In addition, according to his Facebook, “the songs deal with feeling generally displaced,” reflecting on his “family and friends, depression, aging, rap, [New York], pet-ownership and feeling both drawn to and haunted by a desire to isolate.”
Aesop has never embraced a reputation as a depressing or futile figure, and assures fans his new album does not set up shop in the deepest, darkest parts of his psyche, writing, “I hope I was able to convey the humorous lining in the dark times, and the evil hiding in the good.”
“Rings” executes this vision. On the newly released track, Aesop raps about his love for art — specifically drawing and painting — and how his rap career and the natural, chaotic variability of life have precluded him from seeing his passion through. He refers to himself as a “portraiture in a human form,” and his drawing as “tangible truth to a youth who refused to belong.”
He brings the listener through his story of attending Boston University to study the visual arts — “then it’s off to a school where it’s all that you do, being trained and observed by a capable few” — and the carelessness which kept him from ever being serious about his craft, calling himself a “clod” who left “distractions free to maraud.”
The second verse is a cavalcade of beautiful art references which Aesop uses to demonstrate the freedom and purpose he found in his drawings. He calls his artwork a “blooming addiction” from which he found “joy to the poison” and “voice in the resin.”
“Rings” hook and title draw on imagery associated with chopping a tree down to count all of its rings. Aesop attempts to convey by the time he is done rapping, only his production as a rapper will stand to be relevant in determining his worth and reverence, his passion relegated to a hypothetical in the dimlit corners of his mind.
The song ends with Aesop taking full responsibility for never realizing his true passion as an artist, rapping “I left some seasons eager to fall, I left some work to bury alive, I let my means of being dissolve, I let my person curl up and die.” “Rings” shows more vulnerability than Aesop ever has in the past. He doesn’t cloud the track with dense verbiage, forcing his fans to puzzle out the truth.
At age 39 and with just under 20 years of work already under his belt, Aesop places himself on full display, perhaps aware he may not have many more chances to show his audience what matters beyond his rings.
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