Aesop Rock declares: “I Heard It’s a Mess There Too”, and he’s already built the emergency exit.
When Aesop Rock drops an album out of nowhere: bam, 12 tracks, you don’t grab popcorn; you grab a notebook. I Heard It’s a Mess There Too isn’t a fireworks show, it’s a quiet translation of “everything’s falling apart” into “I’m just calmly observing the wreckage.”
Arriving barely five months after Integrated Tech Solutions — dense, layered, borderline baroque — this one plays like a sonic detox. Aesop calls it a reset: cleaner beats, more space, fewer distractions. The title itself sounds like a shrug shared between friends across time zones. Half joke, half truth.
Gone are the heavy stacks of samples. The production breathes: dry drums, low hums, textures that whisper instead of shout. When he raps, “It’s chaos everywhere, even over there,” he lets silence fill the blanks. And that silence does the talking.
It’s observational but never cold. Each bar feels like someone cleaning their glasses before describing the end of the world. Sparse, confident and weirdly intimate. The kind of record that plays perfectly in a half-empty café as the lights flicker and the coffee goes cold.
Where Integrated Tech Solutions filled every inch of the mix, Mess There Too gives you room to think. It’s funny too, the humor of someone petting a cat while watching civilization melt. “Yeah, it’s a mess everywhere,” Aesop seems to say, “I checked. Let me tell you what I found under the rug.”
Forget early-2000s dictionary-rap Aesop. This is a wiser version, still razor-sharp, but now curating chaos instead of cataloguing it. Less a punch in the gut, more a deep breath in a dusty room.
You walk into a mess. Aesop’s already there. He has swept the floor, lit some incense, and says, “See? Feels better already.”
“I Heard It’s a Mess There Too”, out now via Rhymesayers Entertainment.
Lyrics_ Poly Cotton Blend
[Intro: Sample]
I don't know, I don't know
I don't know, know, I don't know
[Verse 1]
Pop a can of snakes, older olive branches break
Breaking through the amber popping frozen cotton candy grapes
Rate the modus operandi, one to proper fancy
It’s mostly a melodrama 'til it summon Thomas Clancy
And bam, final fantasies rampant with fire damage
Hide the jerrycan, scramble with the clandestine every man
I’m everywhere, nanny cam teddy bear
Neighborhood manhunt champion, scan the shrubs, “Hello there.”
Cello playing several housеs over
From the vaults of Vivaldi to the s/t of my sojourn
It gеt him walking like his freedom is covert
I make a gun with my fingers, and take a knee behind the sepia Corolla
I been sneaking up the shoulder, easy peaking ‘round these corners
If the freaks are out this evening, is it even paranoia?
Partly, still I hit a hundred Mississippi
As a hunter out to cut up any other color pinny in the mix
[Chorus]
Oh yea, go mega
In the trench where it get so extra
I’m on it, go AWOL
Get yourself out from behind the eight ball
OK, go stupid, take a piece, take another
No bullshit, get busy, go dum dum
Always hit the ground running with the bumrush
[Verse 2]
XL, elephant man
I yell and shout and let the mountain feel the edge of my hand
I know you getting claustrophobic when those checkers advance
To separate you from your checkered vans, scepter in hand
Put your hands together for the ever damned and revamped
His heart a head in the sand, his head a Edison lamp
Might camp out in the front yard, frozen under golden stars
Wake up with the sun, grab my stuff out the canopic jar
And go, I'm half math over graph paper
The other half bat around Pascal’s Wager
In a sea of class clowns and mad cow behavior
Don’t back down every time the path out taper
I ain’t even breaking at the bottleneck
I’m Mach One, holding up Medusa disembodied head
This is kamikaze over common sense
Rocket fuel stains polka dot the poly-cotton blend, ey
[Chorus]
Oh yea, go mega
In the trench where it get so extra
I’m on it, go AWOL
Get yourself out from behind the eight ball
OK, go stupid, take a piece, take another
No bullshit, get busy, go dum dum
Always hit the ground running with the bumrush
[Verse 3]
Sitting in the middle of my web
Waiting for the very next six legs to misstep
Pick a sticky thread, visit the vivisection infinite
Dip a toe into the tizzy, get your pivot reconsidered
We consider every kill to be a chicken neck and gizzard
Even if it isn't, it is, rock paper scissors
Cold slang move around the room in odd geometry
Catch it, throw it back, it’s a volley to spot the novelty
...act, too true too livin'
Nothing left to prove and still maneuver the minutiae different
Through the futurism, out the prism postmodern
Harlem Globetrotter tickets, no ghostwriters
My superpower is divining open diners
No matter the current local time or broken social climate
There’s one, bacon so fragile
When you touch it with a fork it should break up into shrapnel, like crack
[Chorus]
Oh yea, go mega
In the trench where it get so extra
I’m on it, go AWOL
Get yourself out from behind the eight ball
OK, go stupid, take a piece, take another
No bullshit, get busy, go dum dum
Always hit the ground running with the bumrush
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