Aesop Rock – I Heard It's A Mess There Too

For Aesop Rock, the phrase "I heard it's a mess there too" was just a song lyric at first, but it didn't take long for it to grab him. It sounded familiar, like a phrase he had said a thousand times over the last few years when talking to friends in different cities and telling each other where they were and what was going on. The longer he thought about this sentence, the more he realized that it was the core of something bigger.

"I Heard It's A Mess There Too" stands at the intersection of two personal needs for Aesop: the need to venture out and document his surroundings, and the desire to stay connected - especially when the situation is uncertain. Musically, Aesop Rock breaks new ground on the album. "I've been producing tracks the same way for many years," he says, "but here I've consciously changed my process. I tried out a few new tools and tried to make my beats clearer and more minimalist. The drums are more reduced, the basslines are allowed to just stand on their own without ten other elements layered on top. I didn't want the beat and the vocals to compete for attention - I just wanted enough to get a wave rolling and not much more, just create a mood I could move to."

These twelve songs mark different stages in this journey of experimentation and the search for something new.