None Shall Pass (2007)

None Shall Pass (2007)

None Shall Pass is not the obvious choice for Aesop Rock’s best record — most of his fans would probably pick Labor Days for its gravitas, or Bazooka Tooth for its exuberance. But on None Shall Pass, Aes matched his creativity with intensity. On Labor Days, he cultivated an audience, and the realization of that shook him up on Bazooka Tooth. On None Shall Pass, Aes stood confident, commanding that audience’s attention.

His delivery sounds playful on much of the record, like he’s rolling each individual vowel in his mouth, luxuriating in the shape and taste of them — he shovels a’s and e’s into a hypnotic nasal honk on the second half of “Bring Back Pluto.” On the very next track, “Fumes,” he’s chops his delivery into smaller, more jagged bits before launching into one of his signature fluid syllable streams, “Now the dizziness is similar to whimsy with a pretty twist if pretty is a bidding war for meteors of iffy sniff and cigarettes, and pills on a speaker silhouetted by the muted television and the rickety Venetians.”

In all those slippery words, Aes packs in as much storytelling and observation as ever before, this time taking aim at criminality — None Shall Pass is the closest thing to a gangsta rap album in his catalog. While it might sound funny to think of the former affable graffiti-philosopher as a banger, he summons up some grit: “guns don’t take bribes, stupid, they shoot shit” he drops in a husky bridge on the El-P produced “39 Thieves.” Speaking of thieves, Aes paraded an impressive roster of guest vocalists into the studio for None Shall Pass, including raucous verses from El-P on “Gun For The Whole Family,” and a more than worthy collaboration with Cage (always the most underrated emcee on Def Jux) on “Getaway Car.” The last words actually come from the mouth of John Darnielle, mastermind behind freak-folk outfit the Mountain Goats, who bleats a creepy singing section as the coda to “Coffee.”

It’s diverse territory for Aes, whose interpretation of mafia stretches loosely from pickpockets on “Five Fingers,” to pirates (“This Harbor Is Yours”), to organized religion on the rollicking title track. None Shall Pass marks Aes’ last (for now) collaboration with Blockhead, whose work on the title track, with its twinkling keyboard hook and a mournful electric guitar, has no peer in either artist’s discography.

But Blockhead doesn’t take the spotlight as he did before. The seemingly inexhaustible energy that runs through None Shall Pass comes in large part from Aes’ own production. The attention deficiencies of Bazooka Tooth gave way to a funk-inflected sound, complete with horn sections and fat, rubbery bass tones best heard on “Citronella.” On None Shall Pass, Aesop Rock made his bid at producing a “classic” hip-hop record in terms of sound and lyrics, and largely succeeded. It would turn out to be his last hurrah at Def Jux, which went on indefinite hiatus two and a half years later. It would be four years until his next release, a loss in momentum that Aesop Rock is still recouping from. Those facts don’t detract one iota from the fact that None Shall Pass capped off a run of three groundbreaking records. Aesop Rock’s work on Def Jux both flipped the conventions of an era as well helped define it.