Aesop Rock – Bazooka Tooth
welcome back folks! this week, we’re continuing our discography of Aesop Rock with 2003’s Bazooka Tooth!
Bazooka Tooth has Aesop Rock taking over more of his own production – Blockhead and El-P, longtime collaborators, are still present here, but looking over the tracks he’s a lot more present on the back end, not just on the mic.
thematically, this record opens by suggesting a kind of persona for Aesop in Bazooka Tooth, and his tracks here show a bit more aggression with that perspective. across the opening tracks, New York Electra is defensive of his home town, Easy reacts to his higher media profile (i like the first line – “Cameras or guns one of y’all is gonna’ shoot me to death”), and No Jumper Cables talks about his youth and early years.
the three tracks between interlude 2 and 3 are kinda funny – Super Fluke is a song full of self-criticism and anxiety (he’s calling himself the super fluke), and then launches into what sounds like a brag track about a date but is about the same anxieties in a different arena, haha.
i dig the back sections quite a bit as well – Frijoles and 11:35 are both highlights, though def not perfect tracks, and i really enjoy the El-P collab dis track We’re Famous.
the interludes here are p fun – ive shown a preference for these before, but i love the moment at the end of the Hunter Interlude where the speakers confirms “its bazooka tooth, right?” before repeating “bazooka tooth, bitch!”. The Flunkadelic Interlude is probably my least fave of the three, but thst may be because im less fond of Lamplighters, the song its attached to.
on the whole – v fun, even with the undercurrent here that feels like Aesop is chafing under a larger spotlight, yknow?
faves – Eazy, No Jumper Cables, Frijoles, 11:35
dislikes –
Bazooka Tooth – 7/10
next week, we’ll look at Fast Cards, Danger, Fire and Knives, his 2005 release.
first: Music For Earthworms | previous: Daylight | next: Fast Cards, Danger, Fire and Knives
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