Word: aesop
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...Aesop stresses the importance of the creative method in his own work, as an assembly of “little phrases or sentences,” lyrical fragments typed into cell phones or scrawled onto scrap paper, “metaphors without links...
Tumbling measure? Free play and constrained need? Has Aesop penetrated the formidable defenses of the ivory tower out of a conscious effort to write “poetically?...
When pressed for musical and lyrical influences, Aesop doesn’t spout off references to Yeats or Ashbery, but instead constructs a veritable Who’s Who of classic rap lyricists, including Slick Rick, Ghostface Killah, and his mentor El-P. Instead of spending hours on end fine-tuning his rhyme scheme to match some stifled polyameter, Aesop’s main concern has always been to find “something I can work with, [...] then to assemble it over a beat...
...Aesop grants that the vast majority of rap these days, regardless of its visceral appeal, is still lyrically a “glorified way of saying ‘bitches ain’t shit.’” Battle raps and posse tracks often serve to pad out “albums” lacking any unified theme, even in the “underground” scene in which he operates. An inextricable part of Aesop’s appeal is the relative lack of such pseudo-macho posturing in his work; in his own words...
...what their music lacked in classically-trained polish, it “made up with twice the heart,” and the young Aesop eagerly devoured diverse mix-tapes given to him by his older brother, regardless of the ostensible categorization of the artists included...