Aesop Rock: Bazooka Tooth (2003) 02/23/2009

I get pissed if a “music fan” dismisses the entirety of hip-hop based on the limited impressions provided by the genre’s superstars. Wouldn’t these same people in turn be rightly offended if someone were to equate all punk with Green Day, all electronic music with Moby, all country with Faith Hill, all indie rock with The Strokes or all heavy metal with Slipknot? The truth is that when you have only passing familiarity with a type of music, you’ve probably only heard the popular stuff that is formulated to appeal to dabblers, and thus the most watered-down, lowest-common-denominator examples of the form at hand. Everyone who thinks they don’t like hip-hop should try Aesop Rock’s third widely-released album, Bazooka Tooth. The disc’s first point of departure is the New York MC’s delivery, which is utterly unlike the “Yo, my name is ____ and I’m here to say…” strain of rhyming popularized by 1980s TV commercials. Aes’ meter typically alternates between a rapid-fire flow and a punch-drunk drawl, sometimes within a single line, flitting around his tracks’ central rhythms like a stoned hummingbird. Similarly, his lyrics rarely stoop to the crassly direct approach of radio rappers. Even when bluntly dealing with a particular subject, he dips, dives, and dances around his descriptions, employing abstract details amid jargon-dense disses, boasts and personal revelations. He employs alliteration, consonance, assonance and other language-lover’s tools so enthusiastically that it’s hard to imagine any type of writer objecting. Plus, while Aesop Rock’s unique style is evident in all of his work, Bazooka differs from his earlier catalog as well as 2007’s follow-up, None Shall Pass, because its pointillist musical foundation is so utterly bizarre. It was where he branched off from longtime producer Blockhead, who only provided the beats for a few tracks here, and Aes’ own stuttering funk shards are among the most fascinating of the warped electronic bedrocks championed by foward-thinking rapper/producer El-P’s Definitive Jux label. Polarizing upon release, Bazooka Tooth remains so atypical that even Aesop Rock hasn’t replicated its oddball aesthetic. It’s the kind of album that drives most traditional hip-hop fans nuts, yet its peculiar, homemade collages are just the sort of building blocks that sparked hip-hop in the first place. For evidence, see the two-disc set dubbed Build Your Own Bazooka Tooth, released expressly to allow listeners to assemble their own songs from its parts.

“No Jumper Cables” (official video)

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