Independent hip hop’s most consistent autodidact Aesop Rock has announced that Black Hole Superette, the latest (and arguably best) in a run of remarkable albums from the producer/MC, is set for release May 30 via Rhymesayers Entertainment. Entirely self-produced, and blessed by features from a veritable who’s-who of the most talented MCs on either side of the mainstream/underground divide (Lupe Fiasco, Homeboy Sandman, Open Mike Eagle, billy woods and Elucid of Armand Hammer), Black Hole Superette is one of the most technically accomplished LPs in a discography brimming with them. This becomes apparent from the jump: the album’s second track, “Checkers,” (out today with an accompanying music video by Justin CORO Kaufman) is built on a complex rhythmic architecture but treats the back-and-forth bounce as a vehicle for expansive writing rather than an end in itself. “This is about the neighborhood outside your home being the great leveler,” says Aesop of the song. “You can’t show up feeling one way because the world will show you otherwise.” By the time the album reaches its climax, the listener would be forgiven for asking if this was the most incisive, varied, serrated collection of Aesop Rock beats ever assembled. 

Black Hole Superette is about the pull of the invisible (or all-too-visible) forces around us and the way they shape our psyches. From the fluorescent-colored energy drinks at the corner store to the patchwork blocks one must traverse to get there, the way your personality morphs throughout the day to the day or—in stale airport terminals—feels frozen in amber, this is an album about the small factors that comprise the immensity of life. Each piece of advertising is a little lie designed to make you feel good; when enough of those little lies are assembled in one place, they form their own gravity. “The algorithm enormous,” he raps at one point. “And growing.” 

The convenience store from the title isn’t just a stand-in for the experience of being a consumer. Black Hole Superette also evokes the way those late-night runs for paper towels or ice cream or cigarettes seem to lead you into a liminal space: not quite awake, not quite asleep, real and unreal at once. And so the album—already the fourth in a remarkably productive 2020s for Aes—frequently plays like something half-remembered from a dream. At once dense and kinetic, instinctive but labyrinthine, it’s an album that could only be crafted by one man’s hand.