| Product Summary | | Label: Caroline Distribution | | UPC: 00600308887725 | | Release Date: 9/23/2003 | | Buy.com Sku: 60611893 | | Item#: MSCH5G | Format:  CD |
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Song Listing
| Disc 1 | | Song Title | | 1. Bazooka Tooth | | 2. NY Electric | | 3. Easy | | 4. No Jumper Cables | | 5. Limelighters ~ (featuring Camp Lo) | | 6. Super Fluke | | 7. Cook It Up ~ (featuring PFAC) | | 8. Freeze | | 9. We're Famous ~ (featuring El | | 10. Babies With Guns | | 11. Greatest Pac ~ Man Victory In History, The | | 12. Frijoles | | 13. 11:35 ~ (featuring Mr. Lif) | | 14. Kill The Messenger | | 15. Mars Attacks |
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| | Album Notes and Credits |
Notes & Personnel Info |  | Intital pressings of BAZOOKA TOOTH contain an Enhanced bonus CD, which contains 12 regular audio tracks and multimedia computer files. | | Personnel: Aesop Rock, Camp Lo, PFAC, El-P, Mr. Lif. | | Producers include: Aesop Rock, I. Bavitz, Blockhead, T. Simon, EL-P. | | This is an Enhanced CD, which contains both regular audio tracks and multimedia computer files. | | Few labels in the rap underground boast the profile of Definitive Jux, and few rappers on Def Jux match the talents of Aesop Rock. So his second record for the label came with great expectations, engendered by the success of 2001's Labor Days, which catapulted him into the first rank of hip-hop voices. As far as the expectations go, Bazooka Tooth delivers on most of its promise. The beats are dense and the bass-lines dark, like street-level rap is supposed to be, with a jumble of murky samples and angled effects coming from every direction. And Ace Rock's lurching, nasally flow and obscurist rhymes may not carry every lyric across, but do allow listeners to marvel at the few legible lines. With most of the productions coming from Aesop himself (along with Def Jux mainstay Nasa), Bazooka Tooth lacks the catchy, sample-driven flavor of Labor Days, but does set a standard for basement-level beats, with some of the best hashed-and-screwed productions heard on Def Jux since the Cannibal Ox masterpiece The Cold Vein. Bronx bombers Camp Lo stop by for an old-school horrorcore jam named "Limelighters," Def Jux head El-P guests on a no-biters track called "We're Famous," and Mr. Lif appears on the highlight, the tag-team rhyme manifesto "11:35." The album does, however, reveal a few problems endemic to independent rap in general as well as the Def Jux label and Aesop Rock specifically: to get and keep the respect of the underground, an artist is forced to push his sound farther, but it soon reveals a trap -- no production can be too difficult, no variation in flow too off-kilter, no topics or rhymes too bizarre in order to keep heads nodding. Bazooka Tooth simply pushes too far. ~ John Bush | | Stream-of-consciousness lyrics, stuttering beats, and troglodyte bass lines are the bedrock to Aesop Rock's BAZOOKA TOOTH, a collection of almost freeform rapping that boasts some fashion-forward sampling in a grinding collision of words and found sounds. Rock's third collection of underground rap continues the Brooklyn-based rapper's original course of combining a fusillade of words--some rhyming, some not--with a thick, grainy production (this time courtesy of Def Jux label honcho El-P) that complements his leaps of rhyme and logic perfectly. | | The title track is characteristic of the whole collection, with its elastic bass track underpinning an eccentric sound collage that's an effective counterpoint to Rock's half-heard lyrics. If you're used to some of the more rhythmically straight-laced sounds and the guns-drugs-hoes subject matter coming from East and West Coasts, not to mention the Dirty South, then BAZOOKA TOOTH may come as a shock to the system-which is precisely the intention. |
Engineer: Nasa |
Musical Guests | | Camp Lo | | El-P | | Mr. Lif | | PFAC |
| | Compilation Appearances |
| | Associated Artists and Works |
| | Technical Info | | Release Date : 09/23/2003 | | Original Release Date : 2003 | | Catalog ID : 68 | | Label : Definitive Jux Records | | Number of Discs : 1 | | Studio/Live : Studio | | Mono/Stereo : Stereo | | SPAR Code : n/a | | UPC : 00600308887725 |
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| | Professional Reviews | | Rolling Stone (12/11/03, p.202)
- 3 stars out of 5 - "...Because the New Yorker exudes an unpretentious blue-collar persona that somehow complements his dark beats, his records are strangely compelling..."Entertainment Weekly (9/26/03, pp.92-3)
- "...[Aesop Rock's] sawtooth grooves resemble the apocalyptic, lasers-on-metal sound of [El-P], yet with an accessible, future-funk flavor OutKast--or George Clinton--would be proud to claim..." - Rating: A- CMJ (10/6/03, p.4)
- "...Spouts off verbal assaults in gushes of claustrophic wordplay that execute a sonic jihad on the literary and grammatical rules that hold the rest of us by the nape of the neck..." Mojo (Publisher)
(10/03, p.118)
- 3 stars out of 5 - "...Magnificently intimidating. Every time you think you've got to the bottom of a particular song, another layer of intrigue presents itself..." |
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