Skelethon
Aesop Rock's sixth album, his first without any Blockhead beats or guest rappers, evokes the self-doubt, sleepless nights, and isolated focus required to finish something great. This is rap as Rorschach blot.
“I wrote this on a self-destructing memo,” notes Aesop Rock on “Cycles To Gehenna,” from his first solo album in half a decade. In rap years, that’s plenty of time to self-destruct. Instead, he backed off following a stretch in which each successive Aesop Rock album after the breakthrough Labor Days grew muddier and…
It was more than a little surreal emailing a Rhymesayers publicist for a copy of Skelethon . One, because obviously Aesop…
Like anyone, artists go through dark times, times when everything seems against you, which for Aesop Rock meant the death of a friend, the end of a marriage, and his longtime label, Def Jux, going "on hiatus" while label boss El-P figured things out.
Skelethon is the first album from Aesop Rock to be entirely self-produced, but the template hasn't fluctuated much from the mercurial, experimental approach he adopted on his groundbreaking None Shall Pass. There are flashes of less hip-hop-oriented musical adventures on Crows 1, featuring a nursery-rhyme refrain from Kimya Dawson of twee-folkers Moldy Peaches. Scratch deeper, and many of Aesop's productions are anchored in an indie-rock sensibility, from the picked, echoing guitar melody of opener Leisureforce, to the beatless, vibrato chords behind his emotional verse on Ruby '81.
Aesop Rock 'Skelethon' album review on Northern Transmissions. Skelethon' is now available on Rhymesayers