Aesop Rock and Blockhead have built themselves a ski resort. Trouble Mountain, the duo’s second full collaborative album and their first since Garbology in 2021, arrives on November 13 through Rhymesayers with 17 tracks and a premise lifted from the Pocono Mountains TV ads of Aesop’s New York childhood.
“Trouble Mountain is me and Blockhead’s (fake) Ski Lodge where you might meet your future spouse or you might have to fight some local ski gangs,” Aesop Rock said in the album announcement, adding in brackets that he assumes ski gangs are a real thing. He was candid about his credentials: “I do not ski.” Relatives in the Poconos area meant he spent many childhood weekends there, though, as he put it, “of course not in a sick party lodge.” His summary of the concept: “It’s a metaphor for life, y’all!”
Who turns up on the mountain
The record was announced on September 17 with the single “Trouble Trouble,” and a second preview, “Coyote Summer,” brought in garage-rock singer Hanni El Khatib. Four tracks carry guests in all: El Khatib, Baby Dayliner on “TM Tours,” Open Mike Eagle on “One Thing,” and Cavalier with 4-IZE on “Eat And Grow.” The album is billed as Aesop Rock x Blockhead, the same pairing as Garbology. Titles range from “Swedish Death Cleaning,” the opener, to “Ewok,” “Oatmeal” and the closer, “Buffering.”
The duo’s own store lists the album on CD for $15, as a digital download for $10 and on standard vinyl for $35. Several items were marked sold out when we checked on release day, including the $75 deluxe vinyl, the $20 cassette and a $45 giclée print of the cover art.
A partnership that started at Boston University
The two met at Boston University in 1994, during Blockhead’s only year there. According to Aesop Rock’s biography, Blockhead heard him freestyle and dropped his own plans to rap so he could concentrate on beats. That decision shaped a catalog:
- 1997: Music for Earthworms, self-financed while Aesop was still a student, mostly produced by Blockhead and Dub-L.
- 2000: Float on Mush Records, production split between Blockhead and Aesop.
- 2001 to 2007: the Definitive Jux years, with three Blockhead tracks on Bazooka Tooth and three on the Fast Cars, Danger, Fire and Knives EP.
- 2021: Garbology, released November 12, their first album credited to both names.
- 2022: “Pumpkin Seeds” with Lupe Fiasco, a Blockhead production released as a fundraiser for two DIY skateparks in Dayton, Ohio.
- 2026: Trouble Mountain, released November 13.
Count from that Boston freestyle to this week and the partnership is 32 years old. Trouble Mountain lands almost exactly five years and one day after Garbology, keeping the pair’s habit of mid-November release dates intact.
Aesop has been unusually productive in the gap. He released Black Hole Superette on May 30, 2025, then put out I Heard It’s a Mess There Too that October as a free download on his website. His reputation for density is measurable: a 2014 lyric analysis found 7,839 unique words in his first 35,000 lyrics, the largest vocabulary of the rappers studied.
Rhymesayers has a busy winter. Labelmates Atmosphere are next, as covered in our story on Atmosphere sharing Nostalgia ahead of their album Good Bye Make Party, due January 15. Aesop’s “Pumpkin Seeds” partner is also active, with details in our piece on Lupe Fiasco’s No. 1 Headband from his album Samurai.
Further reading
Image: Fred von Lohmann, CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
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