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Who is Astronautalis?

Posted at 4:10 PM on September 29, 2011 by Peter Valelly (1 Comments)

Photo by Megan Thompson.

Astronautalis is the rap name of Andrew Bothwell, first adopted when he was in high school in Jacksonville, Fla., competing at hip-hop events and trying to make a name for himself on the local scene. As he hopped from Jacksonville to Dallas to Seattle and, as of earlier this year, Minnesota's very own Twin Cities, Bothwell has held on to the Astronautalis name; but he's vastly expanded and experimented with his style.

Although he started his career as an expert freestyler and battle-rapper, over the course of his travels — and throughout his four full-length albums — Bothwell has honed a peculiar and schizophrenic lyrical sensibility rife with shifting characters and viewpoints, obscure references, off-kilter storytelling and a fixation on strange and arcane facts. He's described his style as "historical fiction hip-hop" and called himself an "inspiration junkie" in an attempt to capture the witty, eclectic and inventive worldview that comes to light in his lyrics.

The transformation in his style isn't restricted to just lyrics, however. Bothwell's flow has become more amorphous, too, and he's developed an ability to shift between rapping, singing, spoken-word-style interludes and a freewheeling "talkin' blues" approach.

He's also long incorporated sounds from outside of hip-hop into his style. His self-released debut You and Yer Good Ideas was a mostly lo-fi affair. Yet as his lyrical style expanded on 2006's Mighty Ocean and the Nine Dark Theaters and 2008's Pomegranate, so too did his sonic palette. With much cleaner production and a much more varied set of influences, ranging from country to shoegaze to electro, those albums helped push Astronautalis into the public eye. He quickly became a rising star on the national underground hip-hop scene.

Minneapolis has long been a bastion of indie hip-hop prestige, and Astronautalis took notice of his warm welcome when touring here. It was his show with Sims in March of this year, he tells City Pages, that cemented his decision to move to the Twin Cities. "I had been talking about it for a while," he says, "but the next day was when I started looking for apartments."

On the heels of his arrival to the local hip-hop scene comes his fourth full-length album, This is Our Science, which came out earlier this month, and features collaborations with Doomtree members P.O.S., Lazerbeak and Cecil Otter; Tegan Quin of Tegan and Sara appears on the first single, "Contrails."

Astronautalis' Twin Cities stop on the This Is Our Science tour is Monday, October 3 at the Triple Rock Social Club.

— Peter Valelly, Associate Web Producer

Comments (1)

What an informative read!!! Thanks for sharing this with us.

Posted by Lochabar highland | October 13, 2011 3:15 PM

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