The latest video from overly verbose rapper Aesop Rock is an 8-bit trip. "Shrunk," off his album The Impossible Kid, shows the rapper self-medicating and/or self-psychoanalyzing using video games in an arcade. Lyrically, you'll hear Aesop Rock going toe-to-toe with his therapist, succumbing to the notion that his therapist is running a racket, but Aesop Rock will schedule his next appointment anyway. Visually, we see him dumping unhealthy amounts of quarters down the $0.25 slot in a surreal set of arcade machines. He may be pushing buttons on the arcade, but the arcades are pushing his buttons, too.
If you're unfamiliar with Aesop Rock's headswimming lyricism, know that it's quite alright if you have to give "Shrunk" two or three listens before you start catching onto what he's saying. It's not uncommon for his to go too deep, too soon with his subject matter. But it's worth a watch, worth a listen. If nothing else, you'll see tributes to a bunch of games: Rampage, Tetris, Pac-Man, Frogger, Street Fighter, Snake, Super Mario Bros., it goes on. After one listen, I'm unsure if the arcades are a metaphor for his therapist, if they're simply a coping mechanism, or if they're just a neat, unrelated visual. I doubt it's all unrelated. That's not how Aesop Rock rolls. See what you figure out.
