Music Banter - View Single Post - Analysis/Breakdown of Aesop Rock's lyrics

loweb24 · 06-11-2013, 09:45 AM

Yeah None Shall Pass is great. It seems like the common thing is to look at this song as a commentary on bush-era middle eastern war, and though that's certainly a part of it, I think it's best considered in the broader context of 21st century modern life and society.

I really like "sorta costs a life" and "cash cow's actually beef." Like when you say you're profiting from resources but aren't telling the whole story behind their acquisition. If you are in the habit of acquiring resources violently and exploitatively it makes more sense to say that your cash cow is violence/imperialist/exploitative mentality(hence the sarcastic sure your "cash cow's actually beef"). And then there's this dissonance; we're "sorta" profiting from a culture of exploitation under the guise of capitalistic resource acquisition. Sorta because on one level you know things like sweat shop labor exist, but on the other its actual occurrence is far outside your realm of experience--you are "miles outside the eye of the storm," as it were-- that its ambiguity in your mind is allowed to persist. "Flash that buttery gold, jittery zeitgeist"-- not only does the cultural ethic/zeitgeist that led to Western wealth/ascendance loom questionable in our minds, but the wealth it's led to dissolves before our very eyes. Maybe it's also the nervousness of people who live by it, leading them to insecurely parade the wealth it's led to even as it's melting through their fingers. Or maybe the descriptor "buttery" is more about the transience/meaningless of wealth than that it's disappearing.

The chorus is pretty cryptic, I have a guess though. "Funhouse" definitely refers to the movie, I think that's pretty clear. In the funhouse cast I think he tries to capture the structure of oppressed/oppressors relations. I know that sounds really contrived but here me out. The funhouse cast dies in the movie, but they're just acting, so it's fake. They don't live in the horrifically macabre funhouse of everyday life, they're rich, well-off actors. So he's talking about the people who call the shots, who can insert themselves into less powerful people's realities, exist in the 'horror' of these realities only as actors, and even profit from them as actors do from movies. When such people are judged by others like them, the powerful people whose judgements carry actual temporal weight, nothing will, of course, happen. But Aesop Rock will remember their names and faces, so that when it becomes clear that even with their worldly power and "glitz" they're still missing out on something, that is, when they are judged by a higher metric of worth, he can, you know, say he's right and that he called it. He can say "Sucks to suck swine, none of you shall pass" and feel awesome like Gandalf defying a Balrog.

There's so much more I could say but I'll leave it at that. Thanks for the interpretation mr d00d, I was pretty clueless about this song before it.

06-11-2013, 09:45 AM	#5 (permalink)
loweb24 Groupie Join Date: Jun 2013 Posts: 1	Yeah None Shall Pass is great. It seems like the common thing is to look at this song as a commentary on bush-era middle eastern war, and though that's certainly a part of it, I think it's best considered in the broader context of 21st century modern life and society. I really like "sorta costs a life" and "cash cow's actually beef." Like when you say you're profiting from resources but aren't telling the whole story behind their acquisition. If you are in the habit of acquiring resources violently and exploitatively it makes more sense to say that your cash cow is violence/imperialist/exploitative mentality(hence the sarcastic sure your "cash cow's actually beef"). And then there's this dissonance; we're "sorta" profiting from a culture of exploitation under the guise of capitalistic resource acquisition. Sorta because on one level you know things like sweat shop labor exist, but on the other its actual occurrence is far outside your realm of experience--you are "miles outside the eye of the storm," as it were-- that its ambiguity in your mind is allowed to persist. "Flash that buttery gold, jittery zeitgeist"-- not only does the cultural ethic/zeitgeist that led to Western wealth/ascendance loom questionable in our minds, but the wealth it's led to dissolves before our very eyes. Maybe it's also the nervousness of people who live by it, leading them to insecurely parade the wealth it's led to even as it's melting through their fingers. Or maybe the descriptor "buttery" is more about the transience/meaningless of wealth than that it's disappearing. The chorus is pretty cryptic, I have a guess though. "Funhouse" definitely refers to the movie, I think that's pretty clear. In the funhouse cast I think he tries to capture the structure of oppressed/oppressors relations. I know that sounds really contrived but here me out. The funhouse cast dies in the movie, but they're just acting, so it's fake. They don't live in the horrifically macabre funhouse of everyday life, they're rich, well-off actors. So he's talking about the people who call the shots, who can insert themselves into less powerful people's realities, exist in the 'horror' of these realities only as actors, and even profit from them as actors do from movies. When such people are judged by others like them, the powerful people whose judgements carry actual temporal weight, nothing will, of course, happen. But Aesop Rock will remember their names and faces, so that when it becomes clear that even with their worldly power and "glitz" they're still missing out on something, that is, when they are judged by a higher metric of worth, he can, you know, say he's right and that he called it. He can say "Sucks to suck swine, none of you shall pass" and feel awesome like Gandalf defying a Balrog. There's so much more I could say but I'll leave it at that. Thanks for the interpretation mr d00d, I was pretty clueless about this song before it.