"Aes" Rock in the Honolulu Weekly

Aesop’s fable
by Kalani Wilhelm / 1-14-2009

Aesop Rock
New York emcee Aesop Rock is one of the last underground artists one would think would ever get love from MTV.

Considering that his intellectual stream of lyrics—which seems way too advanced for the casual hip-hop fan to digest—have never changed, and that he’s never gone out of his way to infuse his songs with catchy choruses or hooks for mainstream praise, it’s strange to see him featured in an MTV commercial.

While a little television network shine will never completely define success, “Aes” continues to cater to new fans while maintaining loyal allegiances with his day one supporters who can’t get enough of past offerings from albums such as Labor Days, Bazooka Tooth, No Jumper Cables or even further back in time to classics from albums Music for Earthworms and Appleseed.

Leave it to Jay-Z, Nas and Lil Wayne to duke it out for the title of greatest of rapper of all time: there’s no denying the Long Island rhyme slinger, who is now married and resides in San Francisco, could quite possibly have the thickest rhyme books of all time, no matter how lyrically complex critics tend to perceive it.

While after years in the game, it seems customary for hip-hop artists to eventually emerge from the so-called underground. But in the case of Aesop Rock, it’s the music world that seems to be adapting to him. At the same time he’s proving that when you keep it real, you can never really go wrong.

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