None Shall Pass by Aesop Rock

None Shall Pass, Aesop Rock's fifth album, came out on August 28, 2007, on Definitive Jux, the label El-P ran, and it finds a word-drunk rapper reaching for pictures instead of puzzles. He said he wanted to tell stories this time and take himself out of the middle of them, so the songs wander back to skateboarding, junior high and childhood, sketched in dense, vivid detail.

The sound opens up to match. Blockhead, El-P, Rob Sonic and Aesop himself split the production, and there's more live playing than on anything he'd done before, including guitar from Allyson Baker of Dirty Ghosts, his wife at the time. DJ Big Wiz, Cage, Breeze Brewin, El-P, Rob Sonic and the Mountain Goats' John Darnielle all drop by, and Jeremy Fish drew the cover. It entered the Billboard 200 at number 50 with roughly 13,000 sold in that opening week, and the title track became one of his best-known songs.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.