“It’s been a funny year and a half in my life and across the globe, and I do my best to directly reflect whatever’s going on,” explains Aesop Rock, who might be hip-hop’s most promising answer to escapist bubblegum rap. After hearing just one of the MC’s rapid-fire syllabic attacks, it’s clear that Aesop doesn’t find the world funny in a mirthful, Oscar Wilde sort of way. When he says “funny,” he means distorted, strange and deformed. His new record, Bazooka Tooth, is a dark, almost unbearably dense creation, filled with doomful visions and opaque, claustrophobic beats. Fans of The Importance of Being Earnest need not apply.
With his propensity for complicated wordplay and colorful descriptions, Aesop seems like perfect fodder for the desperate attempts of English professors trying to connect with their students. On his masterful 2001 album Labor Days, Aesop (Ian Bavitz to his relatives) put on a lyrical clinic, cramming each track with piles of mind-blowing images, metaphors and social commentaries. He compares himself to “a thousand born-agains avoiding questions,” equates the 9-to-5 work day to a thousand lemmings plummeting “just because the first one slipped,” and tells the story of Lucy, a woman who found happiness within herself and died with no regrets. But here’s the catch, bibliophiles: This guy isn’t exactly a bookworm.
“I don’t really read books,” he chuckles. “I’m the silent observer type. I just sit and watch shit. There’s enough right in front of you that’s pretty funny. Combine that with a lot of TV, being 27 and still watching cartoons. Just observing what pop culture has turned into these days – it’s endless inspiration for things to write about.”
Humble and unassuming over the phone, Aesop Rock is a madman on the mic. Nobody else could take such wildly fragmented ideas and make them flow so seamlessly. He is a reminder of how good Eminem could be if he wasn’t such a selfish ass. A songwriter inspired by television and people watching, Aesop’s work is twisted, frantic and utterly cynical – he finds pop culture to be frightening, and he uses his innate poetic talents to convey the feelings it gives him. You don’t need a master’s degree in British Literature to see that society’s going down the tubes. Watch Entertainment Tonight.
“Everything just seems so strange to me that I manage to write something about it,” Aesop continues in discussing his strange muse. “I’m not trying to frustrate people; I just don’t read. I read this one book that [producer and founder of the Definitive Jux label] El-P gave me two years ago, and I read 1984 a year before that. That’s about it.”
Despite its gloomy subject matter, Labor Days is one of the most entertaining and rewarding hip-hop albums of the last several years, driven by the catchy, sample-heavy production of Blockhead. On Bazooka Tooth, Aesop handles a majority of the production duties, and the result is as far from the playlist of Hot 97 as you can get. Gone are the simple, straightforward beats, replaced by wet, muddy kick drums, relentless, throbbing bass lines and robotic noises. It’s as if Aesop is challenging his listeners to pay attention, to actively dissect and digest each song. This record is no walk in the park.
Bazooka Tooth is a character straight from Aesop’s head, and it’s nothing unexpected. “It’s a guy with a bazooka for a tooth,” he explains. “In the superhero world, he’d probably get his ass kicked pretty easily. It’s just my little Incredible Hulk thing; he gets stressed out and blows shit up."
This character serves as a conduit through which the artist can vent about the causes of his stress and the roots of his anger. When Aesop groans “I don’t wanna do it anymore” on the track “The Greatest Pac-man Victory In History,” the intensity of his frustration is overpowering. Covering everything from New York City and capitalism to guns and phony rappers, one has to wonder where Aesop stops and sneaks in a breath.
The music is just as unrelenting. “N.Y. Electric” features a faint, Arabian hook, “Freeze” has a scary carnival feel and “Babies With Guns” possesses some haunting, reverb-laden saxophones. The mood rarely strays from the dour and the gloomy. This sets the stage for the album’s best song, a duo with Definitive Jux labelmate Mr. Lif, called “11:35.”
“At that point, the record needed a fun song,” Aesop laughs. “It was definitely getting a little too apocalyptic for its own good. So we just ran with it and did some bouncing back and forth, giving it a little bit of a short story flavor.” Needless to say, “11:35” is a welcome reprieve, reminiscent of the playfulness that surfaced far more often on Labor Days. The sense of relief is quite temporary, as the track ends with the line “by the time the stress wears out, we’ll both be dead and friendless.”
After taking the journey through both Labor Days and Bazooka Tooth, it’s clear that Aesop Rock is at the forefront of the hip-hop underground. So, I did my best to scoff at mainstream rap during our conversation, expecting to induce a passionate tirade, something I could use to back up some grandiose claim equating Fabolous to the Antichrist. The egg on my face is still fermenting.
“I’ll be honest. I’m a fan," the rapper replies, gleefully munching on takeout. “I honestly think that mainstream hip-hop is better than it’s been in a while. What you hear on commercial radio is club rap, and I think there’s definitely a place for that in rap music. I wouldn’t want any less Jay-Z on TV; I just think it’s a shame that there aren’t any options for people who don’t feel that. Kids growing up now don’t even realize that there are other sounds within the realm of rap music. I think there’s enough room for all of it.”
He’s an impressive writer who doesn’t read, an edgy, underground rapper who digs the mainstream, a friendly conversationalist obsessed with the apocalypse, and a 27-year-old who watches cartoons. Aesop Rock may be as close as you can get to a walking oxymoron. Contradiction never sounded so good.
Appeared in the November 27, 2003, issue of Artvoice.