BAZOOKA TOOTH

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. 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.