Consumer Guide: August, 2025
Kentucky road dog goes global/cosmic, no longer pure heroine has erotic adventures, Afro-prop variants are assembled into a congruent groove, and gifted singer-songwriter essays a concept album.
Aesop Rock: Black Hole Superette (Rhymesayers Entertainment) The white Suffolk County rapper with the government name Ian Bavitz is one of a kind—always has been been, collabs included. He shows no sign whatsover of being an active participant in the ever evolving hip-hop aesthetic, ethos, or subculture. With his simple beats and deliberate, articulate rhymes, he’s a verbal artist or maybe we should just call him a poet—one who happily partakes of a relatively recent development in strophic verse, all of which is bolstered by the musical rhythms, textures, and backgrounds that serve to bolster and contextualize the verses he voices. Themes, topics, and incidental verbiage that come to the surface include a snail invasion, a walk in the park, 12,000 birds in a chimney, a fake Eames chair, a baby in the candy aisle, and E-I-E-I-O. A MINUS