El-P is not a better rapper than Aesop Rock. He's awesome, and he's pretty underrated, actually, but Aesop Rock is the (or at least one of the) greatest rappers of all-time. Without a doubt.

Yeah but El-P's music is just better.I feel like Aesop Rock has been trying to copy his sound ever since Bazooka Tooth.
Aesop Rock is still pretty great, i just never feel like listening to him anymore.

Maybe his music is better. Maybe. But we're talking about rappers as rappers, not as musicians. Aesop Rock is the better rapper, and El-P is (maybe) the better musician.

And... I don't really see how None Shall Pass or Fast Cars, Danger, Fire and Knives sounds like they wants to be El-P.

That's funny, I'm the opposite. I always thought El-P was kinda copying Aesop up until I'll Sleep When You're Dead. I dunno - I guess they just used similar styes (monotone, fast, clever, and wordy). El-P always felt angrier and more aggressive but Aesop comes off as a unique sagely rap genius to me.

Also, I almost never listen to El-P anymore (when I do it's always Fantastic Damage) but still a lot of Aesop Rock.

It's like the chicken vs the egg. :D
I really like Float a lot. Thats one AR album i can go back to. But the newer material, he sounds more laid back. I liked it when he was more angsty.

Jester, you don't see hear the El-P influence over None Shall Pass?
I haven't listened to either artist in a long ass time,but i remember thinking it sounded too similar.

Now that I've warmed to Aesop's voice I would say he is a much stronger MC than EL-P, at least as far as flow is concerned. They both have a really dense delivery, but Aesop never seems to trip, or bunch up like EL-P does in places where he crams too many syllables into a line.

Lyrically I think EL-P walks a much better line between abstraction and coherence. Aesop crafts incredibly dope lines, and half the time they add up to great songs - but a lot of the time I find it difficult to follow a thread through the song and I'm left with a bunch of disjointed images and no real message. Sometimes EL-P falls into this trap, but on the whole I can appreciate his songs in a holistic sense because all the pieces come together.

And production wise, Aesop is good but I wouldn't quite put him in the same league as EL-P.

I like Aesop's flow BECAUSE of his stream-of-consciousness approach. His abstraction isn't really that hard to decipher when you view it in parts. The notion that a song needs to be about the same strict concept detracts from the overall experience in my opinion. In Aesop's case I like where you can decipher multiple different concepts in a song and put them together to create something solid from the pieces in your own mind. That's one of the main things I love about his flow... He gives you the pieces and you can arrange them however you want. It's far easier to relate to something like that if you're game for putting in the effort and gluing it all together in your own way, versus someone who's simply spelling out the idea and you either relate or don't.

Aesop is much more interactive to me than anyone else, and that's why view him as highly as I do.

Songs don't have to follow the same strict concepts, but yeah, my favourite lyrics tend to have a unified bent to them, at least building around a theme. A lot of it does come down to how much effort I'm willing to put into breaking down a song, and I have a limit before my enjoyment begins to wane. Like, I love so many parts of the Tugboat Complex pt3 on their own, but I can't for the life of me put them together in a particularly satisfying way. Or, even if I can glean a sense of the song of a whole, there's still a whole bunch of pieces that I can't do anything with.

Still, anyone who can come up with "Now I'm thinkin who am I? Jabberwocky Superfly" is a brilliant lyricist.

Nah, not really. None Shall Pass is like, mildly jazzy/poppy in its production, and Aesop Rock is still Aesop Rock. El-P's sound walks between spacious old school-ism and new school sonics.

I agree with most of that, but I think Aesop Rock's verses are very coherent. He's very stream-of-consciousness styled, and image oriented, but his verses and imagery flow together flawlessly. They don't always have to be clear; a huge part of Aesop Rock's appeal is the crypticness.

I entirely agree with Freebase.

Oh man, Tugboat Complex Pt. 3 is the most lyrically dense song of all-time. It's amazing. But I think that's one of the few Aesop Rock songs that are like, "...WHAT?"

thankyou! This is exactly how i feel.
I'm not good at articulating why i like or dislike music, the best i can ever do is give vague descriptions, but what you wrote pretty much sums up how i feel.

Imagery is cool and everything, but i find that i like my rap lyrics to be more digestible. Aesop Rock occasionally has a really good line

But most of the **** he says has no real weight or context for me, which gets boring.