Best of, #24. Nickel Plated Pockets
Absolute treat here at #24. Nickel Plated Pockets was released on Aesop’s Daylight EP in 2002. Every song on the EP is fantastic and a few of them will make the list in the future. This song features some vocals from Vast Aire who is half of Cannibal Ox, a hip-hop duo out of Harlem.
Let’s get right to it though. The song starts with some ambient noise over a couple bass beats. Vast Aire needs a quarter apparently. Aes drops some of the best lines of the song right away:
Walk into the store with a pocket full of nickels, in a city full of horns, jackhammers, and rape whistles. The alley cats manipulate the blocks with gutter magic, today my heart beats solely out of habit.
Just an absolutely fantastic way to start a song. The listener is immediately engulfed in imagery of a broke Aesop walking into a store in a loud city on a sad day.
After multiple lines of things I’m not sure of, Aes finishes the first verse with:
Operation: Capture Flag By Any Means. If this means anything at all, it’s a riddle. Walk into the store with a pocket full of nickels.
A riddle indeed Aes.
He then starts the second verse with:
Walk into the store with a pocket full of nickels, in a city full of World Trade Center victim candle vigils. There’s anthrax in the mailboxes and Xanax in my tummy. There’s a single Spanish female out west travelling the country.
Just more spectacular imagery. It’s really hard for me to think of an artist that can paint such a picture with lyrics. This stanza is pretty straight forward, I think Aes is just saying it’s NYC, people do crazy shit and I’m on downers because of it. As to the single girl, perhaps it’s the fish that got away in Aesop’s life.
If I ever make it big, I’m gonna’ build a skyscraper tall enough to piss on cloud 9 egos from my corner office.
You can’t pull the plug on a catapult, I toss a nickel to a bum’s cup from twenty paces, thumbs up. Got twenty ways to tell you shut the fuck up. 19 of them are 24 bars long, the other one goes SHUT THE FUCK UP
The next line that I’m about to write is very interesting. If you’re reading this you’re probably a big Aesop fan. You probably know Aesop has a big vocabulary. I bet you realize it grows by one word when you listen very closely to the next line.
Back of the class, throwing pencils at professors and made the barbarellas giggle.
And then listen carefully. That’s all I’m going to say about that line.
Thou shall not desecrate the soothing spiral altered by a classic cut to vinyl. Find that in the bible.
Walk into the store, same pocket, same nickels, in a city where every crack in the sidewalk’s a symbol. Where there’s cracks in the basement, where there’s cracks in the slave ships. Where there’s crack whores and corrupt pigs killing cats trying to crack cases.
I got a poltergeist on a leash trained by Caroline herself.
This is a shout out to the movie Poltergeist
The prickly outer shell’s genetic. It helps defense mode, but it also helps to fuck up a couple of sacred friendships.
Fantastic line there.
You’re the type of cat that rolls a pimped out caddy dropped with rims and limousine tint bumping Enya (insert laughter here). I want to rap a lot a stack cheddar by the fistful. But for now, I walk into the store with a pocket full of….
Great song with a lot of great imagery. Hope y'all liked it. Next one up is a two for one. Hang loose dudes and dudettes.