Aesop Rock - Appleseed [Clear & Black Smoke]

Aesop Rock's Appleseed captures one of underground rap's most distinctive voices before the wider world caught on, pressed here on clear and black smoke vinyl.

First released in 1999 as a homemade CD-R, the EP was sold hand to hand around New York, including from a backpack at an MF DOOM show, while Blockhead handled mail orders from the early internet. Rhymesayers gave it an official reissue in 2021, finally making a cult artefact easy to find.

Aesop handles most of the production himself, with Omega One and Blockhead each stepping in, and the beats are laid-back, dusty and uncomplicated, leaving plenty of room for his tumbling, image-packed verses and off-kilter wordplay. "Dryspell" and "Same Space (The Tugboat Complex, Part 2)" show a writer already allergic to cliché, "1,000 Deaths" rides a moody Blockhead beat, and "Odessa" closes things out with a guest turn from Doseone.

It barely hints at the polished leap of Labor Days two years later, and that's the charm: this is a time capsule of late-1990s backpacker rap, hungry, introspective and fiercely independent, made for headphones and long subway rides.

For anyone tracing Aesop's story back to its roots, this is where the vocabulary first started piling up and the legend quietly began.