Aesop Rock Bazooka Tooth CD

Intital pressings of BAZOOKA TOOTH contain an Enhanced bonus CD, which contains 12 regular audio tracks and multimedia computer files.

Stream-of-consciousness lyrics, stuttering beats, and troglodyte bass lines are the bedrock to Aesop Rock's BAZOOKA TOOTH, a collection of almost freeform rapping that boasts some fashion-forward sampling in a grinding collision of words and found sounds. Rock's third collection of underground rap continues the Brooklyn-based rapper's original course of combining a fusillade of words--some rhyming, some not--with a thick, grainy production (this time courtesy of Def Jux label honcho El-P) that complements his leaps of rhyme and logic perfectly.

The title track is characteristic of the whole collection, with its elastic bass track underpinning an eccentric sound collage that's an effective counterpoint to Rock's half-heard lyrics. If you're used to some of the more rhythmically straight-laced sounds and the guns-drugs-hoes subject matter coming from East and West Coasts, not to mention the Dirty South, then BAZOOKA TOOTH may come as a shock to the system-which is precisely the intention.

Personnel: Aesop Rock, Camp Lo, PFAC, El-P, Mr. Lif.

Producers include: Aesop Rock, I. Bavitz, Blockhead, T. Simon, EL-P.

This is an Enhanced CD, which contains both regular audio tracks and multimedia computer files.Rolling Stone (12/11/03, p.202) - 3 stars out of 5 - "...Because the New Yorker exudes an unpretentious blue-collar persona that somehow complements his dark beats, his records are strangely compelling..."
Entertainment Weekly (9/26/03, pp.92-3) - "...[Aesop Rock's] sawtooth grooves resemble the apocalyptic, lasers-on-metal sound of [El-P], yet with an accessible, future-funk flavor OutKast--or George Clinton--would be proud to claim..." - Rating: A-
CMJ (10/6/03, p.4) - "...Spouts off verbal assaults in gushes of claustrophic wordplay that execute a sonic jihad on the literary and grammatical rules that hold the rest of us by the nape of the neck..."
Mojo (Publisher) (10/03, p.118) - 3 stars out of 5 - "...Magnificently intimidating. Every time you think you've got to the bottom of a particular song, another layer of intrigue presents itself..."