Aesop Rock/Rob Sonic/Homeboy Sandman

Holding down a mighty mantle in the underground hip-hop scene, Aesop Rock has been cooking up some of the most complex rhymes and narratives of the past decade-plus. None Shall Pass and Skelethon, released in 2007 and 2012, respectively, indeed show the rapper at the peak of his game, though its a peak Aesop first hit on 2000’s Float. That album is something of a harrowing masterpiece. Nervous bass lines drip like nasal cocaine absorption, and haunted-house synth beats curl around mysterious and evil lyrical imagery. There’s no other album like it. Also, do you remember that “vocabulary in hip-hop” chart that was floating around the Internet a few years ago? Aesop came in at the top with 7,392 unique words employed in the first sequential 35,000 words in his catalog of lyrics. That’s deeper than Shakespeare at his best and Herman Melville’s Moby Dick! (Sandy)