Aesop Rock

After all the shit that went down recently, I was in dire need of some innocence, some childhood memories wrapped in humor and simplicity. Rap isn’t usually the place to find that. Luckily the world has one, Aesop Rock. 

His record The Impossible Kid is like Milo went to college, then dropped out, decided to just make art, got good at it, then got older and moved to the middle of nowhere to keep at it. I think Aesop Rock is doing his best to end up like Lucy. If you love this video like I did, look for all the others. The Impossible Kid is accompanied by a seemingly impossible number of videos. 

“Blood Sandwich” is a tale about brothers. Sometimes strained, sometimes reminiscent, often distant, wrapped in misunderstandings and misplaced memory, but the relationship is always be about love. 

We shot BBs at each other. We made bike jumps on suburban streets. We once rescued a foot-wide snapping turtle from the bayou and tried to keep it as a pet until it bit a neighborhood kid’s fingernail off. We endured physical and emotional abuse, together. We moved from coast to coast to coast in the back of so many cars that the cross-country trips run together in my memory like melted ice cream. We ran track. Well, he ran track. I mostly ran to the concession stand. We flew parentless, each with a little wing pin pinned to our t-shirts. We swam and swam and swam. We were brothers. 

Now we’re mostly strangers. 

I barely talk to my brother. We have differences. He has a life with a bunch of shit going on. So do I. We live on different coasts. In different cultures. Difference politics. Different occupations. But he’s my brother and nobody else in this world experienced what he and I did, together. And I love him. 

Aesop Rock reminded me I should tell him that. 

The world is nuts. I love the love that Aes oozes and when love is what I need, and when love is what the whole world needs, I love that Aesop Rock still loves making music filled with so much love. 

Love,

B