Crucial Track for February 2, 2026

"Jambi Cafe" by The Uncluded

#365songs (33 / 365)

The Uncluded was a tremendously weird collaboration between thesaurus-wielding motormouth rapper Aesop Rock and "anti-folk" (I just saw this term and don't know if it's a real thing people say but the Wikipedia definition seems to fit) singer Kimya Dawson of the Moldy Peaches. It was a one-off that apparently ended in bad blood and accusations from Dawson of abusive behavior on Aes's part, but the album itself has a remarkable chemistry from two musicians whose styles couldn't seem to be more different, on tracks ranging from the goofy ("Superheroes") to the unexpectedly moving (this one).

I'm not gonna lie: I like Aesop Rock's portion of "Jambi Cafe" more, and I think Hokey Fright marked a turning point in his overall lyricism where he started to move from incredibly opaque, dense verses to a more comprehensible (if still not exactly plainspoken) form of rapping. His "Ah dude" in his verse here is so tender it sometimes gets me choked up to hear it, and based on everything else I'd heard from him I would not have really expected "tender" to be part of his otherwise extremely large vocabulary.

But despite that The Uncluded revealed a new side of Aesop Rock, their one album Hokey Fright would not be as good or unique as it is without Kimya Dawson's side of it. A lot of these songs, "Jambi Cafe" included, have a childlike or naïve feel to them and Dawson's voice complements that perfectly, but even on the more "grown-up" ones she brings a straightforwardness that complements Aes's still-verbose rapping really well. There are some other great songs on Hokey Fright, and some where a case could be made for their being kind of atrocious, but "Jambi Cafe" is the one that moves me, and it honestly kind of all centers on that "Ah dude."