Aesop Rock’s Integrated Tech Solutions may be a sci-fi concept album, beginning with an opening interlude about a company promising “lifestyle and industry-specific explanations designed to curate a desired multi-experience,” but it’s uncommonly direct about being inspired by the rapper’s everyday life. Rather than following similarly themed albums by the likes of hip-hop supergroup Deltron 3030, Aesop Rock’s latest locates its own lane, concerned with life experiences, both positive and negative, that take place offline.
Aesop reins in his tendencies toward word salad throughout Integrated Tech Solutions. Songs like “Aggressive Seven” and “Mindful Solutionism” are upfront about their subject matter without veering into over-explanation. The former track, for instance, confronts mental illness, while the jazzy “By the River” finds Aesop bidding farewell to a dead friend.
Showing off the Aesop’s wide range of influences, the album’s lyrics casually run through multiple frames of reference, from Run-DMC and Nas to Brian Eno and Bad Brains. With a writerly level of detail, Aesop fleshes out his stories with casual remarks about the size of the Carnegie Deli’s sandwiches or the fact that he’s the “only rapper with no car.”
The bubbling synthesizers and turntable scratches peppered throughout Integrated Tech Solutions hark back to El-P’s production for his Definitive Jux label, which released Aesop’s 2001 breakthrough underground success, Labor Days. But this album doesn’t simply imitate early-2000s backpacker rap. Aesop supplies his own beats and weaves them with live instrumentation, including bass that snaps like a giant rubber band.
Integrated Tech Solutions likewise distinguishes itself by confining its paranoia to its lyrics. Despite addressing his struggles with depression, Aesop has typically sounded best rapping over upbeat production, which keeps his lyrical excesses at bay. So while the album may play it a little safe, it also smartly plays to its creator’s strengths.
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