Aesop Rock and Blockhead have released their collaborative album, Garbology, out now via Rhymesayers EntertainmentGarbology marks the first time Rock has worked with his longtime musical ally on a full album, despite single-song collaborations dating back to the late ’90s.

Rock and Blockhead previewed the album back in October with the first and only single, “Jazz Hands“, setting the tone and themes carried throughout its 14 tracks. Dreamt up and conceived during a creative lull following the death of Aesop’s close friend in January 2020, Garbology marks a return to form for the New York rapper.

“The world got really weird during those months, I knew at some point I had to get back to making something,” said Aesop in a press release upon the album’s announcement. “Make a beat. Draw a picture. Write. Just go. But the idea of making a beat felt like math homework, and drawing is just so hard. Writing is hard too, but at some point I had to pick one.”

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Songs like “Difficult”, “All the Smartest People”, and “All Day Breakfast”—which features the same Homeboy Sandman that joined Aesop on an MF DOOM tribute track earlier this year—channel our current moment: finding a way to entertain ourselves during a time where social interactions remain infrequent.

Aesop continued,

Garbology is defined as the study of the material discarded by a society to learn what it reveals about social or cultural patterns. I find a lot of parallels between that and the idea of picking up the pieces after a loss or period of intense unrest, and seeing what’s really there. It’s information that speaks to who I am, who we are, and how we move forward. Furthermore – the idea of digging through old, often neglected music from another time with an ear tuned for taking in that data in a different way than your average listener would is exactly what Block does. Go through the information and see what you find.

Garbology takes the emotions of anger, desperation, restlessness, and weariness present in Aesop’s lyrics, packages them with some of the most sonically satisfying instrumentation from Blockhead’s masterful production, and delivers them with a uniqueness seldom heard on present-day hip-hop records.

Listen to Garbology below and click here for additional listening options.

Aesop Rock, Blockhead – Garbology