Name	Aesop Rock
Height
Naionality	American
Date of Birth	June 5, 1976
Place of Birth	Long Island, New York, United States
Famous for

White New York City rapper Aesop Rock rhymes as if he’s trying to recite his internal monologue, smothering exotic beats in bizarre observations and confessional narratives seemingly woven from the utterances of someone talking in their sleep. On Float, the breakthrough that—along with Cannibal Ox’s The Cold Vein—ushered in the postmillennial “undie” (short for “underground”) hip-hop movement, Aesop even provided liner notes explaining the ambitious, oblique, and sometimes simple ideas that inspired each song. About “6B Panorama” he writes, “Home. Studying my surroundings from the inside looking out. Taking notice of the overlooked elements of one day.” These elements include pigeons, vagabonds, princesses, junkies, “batty” senior citizens, jaywalkers, and men “slapping dominoes down”—the details of a “city, a village, a neighborhood, a ghost town.”

And he goes on. And on, and on, over the croak of ’70s funk synth and a stripped-down, skipping beat he produced. Blockhead, Omega, and, most famously, Slug (the voice behind fellow undie stalwarts Atmosphere) also create Aesop’s music, which is usually elegant but sometimes hook-deficient. The funny, meditative, and startlingly original Labor Days, however, brims with crooked details that snag one’s attention, like the bursts of woolly synth on “Labor,” the flutelike lead and melodic bassline on “Daylight,” the Asian ambience of “Flashflood.” Aesop’s dorky and subtly ironic voice courses through every track like a snake digesting a recent meal, as he ponders the metaphysics of working nine to five, relates the life and times of a wannabe artist named “Lucy,” and makes obscure references (to mythology, for instance) that even the careful listener will never parse. More than dense, Aesop Rock’s food-for-thought rhymes are delectably rich. And every so often he delivers a zinger, like this one from “Daylight”: “Life’s not a bitch/life’s a beautiful woman/you only call her a bitch ’cause she wouldn’t let you get that pussy.”

“If cameras are guns, one of y’all is gonna shoot me to death,” Aesop intones at the start of “Easy,” overestimating the amount of press his last two discs earned him. Bazooka Tooth suffers from his premature effort to stay underground: the beats are crafted for close listening, not casual enjoyment, and the rhyme flows are overly dense and therefore seem less impassioned. (NICK CATUCCI)