I went down to Austin with my dude Khalid for STAPLE, the independent media expo this past weekend. Like any road trip with Khalid, it was a oasis of underground hip hop bliss! It was a special treat listening to Aesop Rock's 2003 smash
Bazooka Tooth
, which would have stayed on repeat if I was driving. Aesop really embraces rhyming as if he is an instrument on the track, not a dude rapping over a metronome. Underground hip hop gets accused of being stuck in the mid-nineties a lot, but there's nothing more futuristic than turn-of-the-century Def Jux. Because his flow is so unorthodox, I was more into tracks with guest emcees like
Limelighters (f/ Camp Lo) and the underground anthem
We're Famous (f/ DefJux ceo El-P) at first, but now... it gets no better than
Easy, where 'Sop is in rare form. Like a lotta the music I like, Aesop Rock songs are not designed to have their full effect on the first listen, but
Easy is jamming nonetheless. 'Sop sits in the space between emcees rehashing old Quest albums and the next version of the second (thousandth) coming of Tupacalypse... He's a emcee who honors the rappers before him by trying to do something totally different.
word.-samax.
, but I need to get it... I spent some time pouring through some youTubery from the record, and it's all good stuff. Case in point, peep this video for Pigs which also features Aesop's album cover artist Jeremy Fish painting a SWEET mural... and because I am a man of and for the people, I threw in the official video for the title track too...
