Aesop Rock
“Skelethon”
Rhymesayers
3 stars
Hip-hop has gone feral lately, with MCs transmitting freaky, woozy hip-hop through the Internet’s outer orbits. But what to make of the weirdos who have always been with us? Ian Bavitz, the San Francisco MC who performs as Aesop Rock, was a leading light of a late-’90s/early-’00s strain of hip-hop that made a virtue of its flinty independence, sonic experiments and often inscrutable wordplay. “Skelethon” might be the album that takes those core aesthetic traits and spins them into whatever counts for stardom in today’s underground rap world.
