Music sharing thread.

[Avianmosquito]

So, you don't like a lot of rap, but like some rap rock. No biggie (smalls). :smallsmile

Actually, my appreciation for Aesop Rock is on an intellectual level. The man is well read and erudite, references classic literature constantly, works primarily in metaphor and satire, and makes biting social commentary in almost every track. His lyrics are extremely well written, and it's the writing that I appreciate. For example, the first couple lines of the first verse of Coffee:

"And the last shall be first to immerse in the pass-out heat, face in the mud where the moxie melt, 'till he woke up drowning in tchotchke hell, more in a cave with a torch on the wall than a window arrangement of porcelain dolls."

Okay, that's a couple lines from a RAP track, but there is a LOT to break down right there, and 99% of people are not going to get most of it. Let's go line by line.

"And the last shall be first..."

Well, he starts with a religious reference, so the site won't let me explain this one. Oh well.

"...to immerse in the pass-out heat, face in the mud where the moxie melt..."

There's a mental image. Face in the mud is a saying denoting humiliation, moxie means spirit or willpower and that melting means losing your strength of character, and pass-out heat is the likely culprit there. It's not literal heat, however. He's talking about being worn down by external pressures. We'll see which in the next line.

"...'till he woke up drowning in tchotchke hell..."

Materialism, yep. Tchotchkes, if you don't know, are small collectibles with no value or purpose. Drowning in tchotchke hell would be a painful obsession with collecting worthless objects, so he's referring to materialism. Simple enough.

"...more in a cave with a torch on the wall than a window arrangement of porcelain dolls."

Are you familiar with Plato's metaphor of the cave? If you do, and you keep in mind the talk about materialism and tchotchkes, you'll get this already. If not, the metaphor of the cave was Plato's way of explaining subjective reality, he likens us to people inside a cave, trying to guess at what's going on outside (in the real world) through shadows on a wall. A torch on the wall would make this much more difficult, masking the shadows, which is what Aes is comparing the porcelain dolls, a good example of a worthless collectible, to. He's saying that this person is too focused on material posessions, and it is making it hard for them to grasp the world around them.

Looking back on the external pressures in the first line, it seems likely the external pressures that are leaving this man broken and without dignity are material ones. Aes doubles down on this in the second verse.

"And the last shall be first to the curb with the mad-cow meat. Face in the bars of a regular cell when he work up high and collectible hell. Boom-town kid who was taught by the binge that the man who expire with the most **** wins, that's warpy American nonsense penned by the rich not a routine friend in a pinch. Still not used to the stench, how it throws off otherwise lucid events..."

Hell, even the crudest line in this track is a metaphor containing social commentary.

"It goes red light, green light, 123: One large coffee, **** you, peace."

He has, at this point, likened society to waiting in line at a coffee shop, and waiting in line to a game of red light, green light. (He has used these metaphors before, and is building off his previous work.) The last bit at the end is expressing a desire to get what he came he for and leave, and the added "**** you" speaks for itself. In the end, this track is expressing disdain for society, in particular the rap industry, and expressing a desire to retreat from it. He even refers to this as "hermitry" in the chorus, which is an apt description.

It's this kind of thing, this writing, that I appreciate regardless of genre. I still don't like rap music, it appeals to me slightly more than country, but the writing here is so solid and so interesting to dig into that it has overcome my distaste for the genre.