Written by Noah Goodbaum | Photography by Philip Litevsky

The Friday before last, I had the unique and valuable opportunity to witness Camp Lo open for Aesop Rock. I’m sure many purists would balk at the idea of even giving Aes the time of day, and his unorthodox style definitely isn’t easy to listen to, but on the real, whatever his flaws, I think a case can be made that Aesop is one of those mad-genius people who deserves to be remembered in the history books.

For serious. The dude is razor-sharp, with a higher “Holy crap, how the hell did he think to say THAT?” count per song than just about anyone you can name inside or outside of rap. He has a biting wit, an imaginative gift for memorably skewed impressionistic imagery, and an authorial voice that’s uniquely his own. He’s the hard-bitten inner city griot, mercilessly caustic but subtly sensitive, doling out piecemeal bits of insight which, hidden beneath layers upon layers of metonymy and allegory, reveal the warmth and light behind the world’s grime and darkness. He’s a fucking genius, a worthy heir to the path-paving Saafir, and practically the only rap cat since De La Soul to create a completely new paradigm for the genre entirely from scratch. He’s spawned a million imitators, all of them inferior; cats have been playing catch-up ever since.

And man, can he ever make these white kids happy. Slit-eyed, with a wolf’s grin and a smoke-stained husk of a voice and an amiable hypeman in Rob Sonic (one of the classiest of Aes Rock’s Mini-Mes, who has some serious talent himself and who looks, entertainingly, like El-P + 100 extra lbs. + Jew-fro), he unleashed his impossibly oblique and complex torrent of verbiage with no delay, and had every last die-hard hyper-literate Chomskyite undergrad in the place hanging on his every four-syllable word. It was impressive as hell– I’d heard Aes’ stage presence dismissed as nothing special by folks who’d seen him kick it with the more charismatic Murs, but he held the stage with aplomb. The title track off his new album, None Shall Pass, is a monster banger with the most infectious beat he’s ever spit on and some characteristic verses over top it: taut and fascinating and laden with contempt for the socio-political status quo, but more than likely completely absurd. Aesop Rock is a hell of a dope rapper, but there’s a reason only folks of a certain bent have got the stamina to actually listen to him on the regular. Given I think he’s hugely talented and I’m a big booster in the face of the inevitable backlash against his weirdness, I’m a little ashamed not to be one of ‘em.

But I do listen to Camp Lo. What, you thought I didn’t listen to Camp Lo? Are you kidding? I want to grow up to talk and act exactly like Camp Lo. And you should too. You know why? Because CAMP LO ARE AWESOME. They’re my heroes. Camp Lo, those gently Blaxploitative, unselfconscious Afro-Dadaists. Camp Lo, those too-cool-for-schoolers completely punch-drunk on their own stardust moonshine. Are you trying to tell me there’s something better in the whole universe than the feeling of seeing them perform all their utterly flawless Dali-meets-Dolemite classics– every single one you could possibly have hoped you’d hear– in the span of about 45 minutes? ‘Cause there ain’t. Really. There ain’t. In a way, it’s poetic justice that they looked past the race and class barriers to hook up with Aes; they’re probably the closest thing he has to antecedents, a universe unto themselves, as daring as he is with their sui generis steez, and, even better, warm and fly and fresh enough to be able to the one thing Aes Rock often can’t — get listeners in on the fun, take them on a ride not just somewhere they’ve never been before, but someplace they’ll have a blast returning to. I can hardly talk about them; there’s such a joy contained in the way they get down that I betray my hapless fanboyism in even trying to kick knowledge about them that’s unbiased in the least.

Their debut album, Uptown Saturday Night, is just a gossamer delight, one of the most perfect things you’ll ever hear. You should really give it a listen sometime.