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Artist: Aesop Rock
Album: 'Bazooka Tooth'
Label: Definitive Jux
Web site: www.DefinitiveJux.net
Listen:
1) 'Bazooka Tooth'

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Aesop Rock: 'Bazooka Tooth'

Freestyle rapper makes his point well

By David Williams
Austin American-Statesman
November 20, 2003

Less than a minute into "Bazooka Tooth," underground MC Aesop Rock is critic-dissing: "Oh my God/journalists across the globe are officially critiquing my first eight bars." Now that the young rapper is semi-famous, he's striking the sort of battle stance he avoided on his first two albums; this man is "abstract" no more.

As in his earlier work, on "Bazooka Tooth" Rock uses his nasal-topped baritone to deliver near-freestyle content that's all allusion and thumbed thesaurus. Try this at home: "Play Aphrodite all over the verbal of a Purple Heart compartment/marks the burgundy carpet/alarmed and far too parched to bark it/huh/Lil' Abner." Even a battle track like the Eminem-dissing "Freeze" isn't simple, though "You should have shot yourself in the foot/when it was in your mouth" is fairly to the point.

"Tooth" is mostly self-produced, resulting in beats that are even denser than on the typical (that is, typically difficult) Def Jux release. Rock's headlong vocals, which already generated claustrophobia, now have some serious competition in the pandemonium department. Perhaps too much. When producer Blockhead steps in to lighten things up on "Cook it Up," it's a relief. Likewise, the Blockhead-produced "11:35," built on a chopped-up sample from Manu DiBango's 1973 Afrobeat crossover hit, "Soul Makossa," bounces easy while the vocals jump up to the boogie. The lyrics are relatively (relatively) accessible, too: Aesop and labelmate Mr. Lif cover a series of events that occurred at 11:35 p.m. on a particular night.

Set one variable to zero and riff. Typically intelligent Aesop strategy. Even a critic can hear that.

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