"In a 2003 interview with CMJ New Music Monthly, Aesop Rock does his best to dismantle his mythology. The piece paints a portrait of a hyperactive mind wracked with executive dysfunction, the plight of an artist caught between the gears of his own brain. Standing in his messy apartment, replete with spent matchbooks and ashtrays overflowing onto the floor, Aes looks on as El-P, his labelmate, and Teal, his publicist, pick up empty water bottles and discarded CDRs."
"It's easy to imagine him spinning in circles, ambivalent about the profile and unsure of how to help his friends clean; his quotes oscillate between a slight grandiloquence about his records being classics and a rattling anxiety about how he's perceived. This was during the press cycle for Bazooka Tooth, his nervy fourth record and follow-up-slash-fuck-you to 2001's Labor Days, the breakthrough that propelled him into minor rap stardom."
Aesop Rock's Bazooka Tooth emerged as a nervy fourth record following 2001's Labor Days, showcasing dense, idiosyncratic lyricism and a confrontational stance toward newfound attention. Press and online fans positioned him as a genius while he grappled with executive dysfunction and discomfort around publicity. Scenes from 2003 show domestic disarray — matchbooks, ashtrays, discarded CDRs — and a sense of being misread. Born Ian Mathias Bavitz in 1976 on Long Island, he grew up in Suffolk County with brothers Graham and Chris and pursued drawing at Boston University, graduating in 1998 with a Certificate of Fine Arts. His work channels personal chaos into complex imagery.
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