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Originally Posted by matious
It's like the chicken vs the egg. 
I really like Float a lot. Thats one AR album i can go back to. But the newer material, he sounds more laid back. I liked it when he was more angsty.
Jester, you don't see hear the El-P influence over None Shall Pass?
I haven't listened to either artist in a long ass time,but i remember thinking it sounded too similar. |
Nah, not really. None Shall Pass is like, mildly jazzy/poppy in its production, and Aesop Rock is still Aesop Rock. El-P's sound walks between spacious old school-ism and new school sonics.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Fruitonica
Now that I've warmed to Aesop's voice I would say he is a much stronger MC than EL-P, at least as far as flow is concerned. They both have a really dense delivery, but Aesop never seems to trip, or bunch up like EL-P does in places where he crams too many syllables into a line.
Lyrically I think EL-P walks a much better line between abstraction and coherence. Aesop crafts incredibly dope lines, and half the time they add up to great songs - but a lot of the time I find it difficult to follow a thread through the song and I'm left with a bunch of disjointed images and no real message. Sometimes EL-P falls into this trap, but on the whole I can appreciate his songs in a holistic sense because all the pieces come together.
And production wise, Aesop is good but I wouldn't quite put him in the same league as EL-P.
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I agree with most of that, but I think Aesop Rock's verses are very coherent. He's very stream-of-consciousness styled, and image oriented, but his verses and imagery flow together flawlessly. They don't always have to be clear; a huge part of Aesop Rock's appeal is the crypticness.
I entirely agree with Freebase.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Fruitonica
Songs don't have to follow the same strict concepts, but yeah, my favourite lyrics tend to have a unified bent to them, at least building around a theme. A lot of it does come down to how much effort I'm willing to put into breaking down a song, and I have a limit before my enjoyment begins to wane. Like, I love so many parts of the Tugboat Complex pt3 on their own, but I can't for the life of me put them together in a particularly satisfying way. Or, even if I can glean a sense of the song of a whole, there's still a whole bunch of pieces that I can't do anything with.
Still, anyone who can come up with "Now I'm thinkin who am I? Jabberwocky Superfly" is a brilliant lyricist.
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Oh man, Tugboat Complex Pt. 3 is the most lyrically dense song of all-time. It's amazing. But I think that's one of the few Aesop Rock songs that are like, "...WHAT?"