Aesop Rock – Music For Earthworms
welcome back folks! we’re kicking off a new discography this week with Aesop Rock!
Music for Earthworms is the debut record of New York rapper Aesop Rock – he self-released the record in 1998, which consisted of tracks that had been recorded on trips back to New York from college. it’s split into three groups – the first tracks are under a header of “Some Recent Tracks”, the middle few are “The Controls featuring Aesop Rock”, and the record rounds out with “Some Dusty Oldies from a Few Years Back”. there’s something extremely earnest about just scooping up all your recent work, everything you can get your hands on, slapping it on a cd and handing it out to anyone who’ll buy it, and from what ive read he was pretty active online trying to distribute it and get his name out. some of that shows up in like, the radio prono tracks, where some of it is cut somewhat bluntly to show his parts in it, haha.
overwhelmingly, these are consistently dense raps over some extremely laid back and chill beats – i think Abandon All Hope is an extremely apt way to ease into that sound, and itll give you and idea of what to expect musically here, even as the pace is a bit restrained. he really turns up the speed on Wake Up Call, which features Percee P. notable here is the delivery changeups on The Substance – really really enjoy the way the second verse erupts out, but i think going back down to the steady plodding delivery for verse three lessens the effectiveness somewhat. i think the radio tracks here are fun includes for sure, but i dont feel strongly about them otherwise, and the dusty oldies that round things out are likewise just nice – i really dig his verses on Antisocial, for example, but the beat’s just fine and the audio samples dont really do it any favors, imo. some of the most interesting to me, contextually were the Control tracks – Aesop’s presence on Coward of the Year, for example, is a lot closer to the style ive heard of his future work.
on the whole, i really enjoyed this record – theres some really solid lines throughout, and i know Aesop Rock’s reputation for wordplay and complex vocabulary, so its cool to see that on display here. like i said above, this feels very much like trying to establish yourself and show whatever you have – i’m excited to see more as the production grows and we get some more focused song collections.
Music For Earthworms – 5/10
next week we’ll take a look at his follow up EP, Appleseed!
this is the beginning | next: Appleseed
all my reviews for Aesop Rock (coming soon)
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