CD Reviews

Aesop Rock

None Shall Pass | Definitive Jux

By RICHARD BECK | August 28, 2007

3.0 Stars

“It’s rain of the razor laser/Day of the cloudy howdy/Flight of the shelter melter/You can bow without me.” Sometimes I don’t have one goddamn clue what misanthropic underground hip-hop king Aesop Rock is talking about. But most of the time I want to rewind and figure it out: “There is a hole in front of the shovel/A shovel in front of the brawn/Six million guerrillas for whom the graves yawn.” It’s a sardonic, cynical brand of conscience rap, where all that’s left is to realize that capitalism is everywhere and you’re screwed. Aesop’s preference for boring “live” beats tends to hit somewhere between the Roots (“Getaway Car”) and Linkin Park (“None Shall Pass”), but that hardly matters: it’s his delivery that commands the attention here. The man bends his intonation like an ax slayer in a blues band, and he sounds as if he were eating his rhymes even as he spits them out. Bloggers have been signaling approval for Mountain Goats’ John Darnielle’s phoned-in cameo on “Coffee.” Makes perfect sense.

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