TOP 10 ALBUMS OF THE DECADE-- #10

AESOP ROCK-- LABOR DAYS

Labor Days is a phenomenal album. Seriously, as in the literal sense. Eight years later it's still Aes's definitive work, and the album that symbolizes Def Jux and their fellow travelers.

It also, like the nine on my list that'll follow from here until the beginning of the twenty-teens, represents something about modern music to me, represents some of what this decade is made of sonically. The incredible denseness, the sneer, the sparsity. The album was released just a week after 9/11 and, while the event itself isn't reflected directly, Labor Days fits snugly into the post-WTC modern paranoia, the Raskolnikovian sense of malaise that's characterized the past ten years.

The album itself, recorded while Aesop was still working full-time, is a cynical dismemberment of modern urbanism-- fast food, wage slavery, soot, dying dreams, the 9-5 trudge. Firmly grounded in Rock's own Brooklyn, it flutters back and forth from the manic to the depressive, from skies to subways. It's Aesop's darkest, as well-- psychically violent, sooty, despairing. Aesop's sense of humor is subdued here, manifesting primarily as sarcasm.

Finally, Labor Days is a meaningful album. One of the veins that runs through hip-hop is that of class, wealth, and disparity, and Aesop speaks to that better than any other musician I've heard. My good friend Solomon credits it with pushing him into a new phase of his life, and it's hard to deny the potential power of the work.

And that's why Labor Days is ranked #10 on my list-- it's powerful, perfectly constructed, and succeeds on every level it approaches.