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Over four albums and three EPs, Aesop Rock has taken his geeky, hyperliterate persona as far as it could go without becoming outright nerdcore. On None Shall Pass, his verbosity plays like the hip-hop equivalent of the excesses of '70s prog-rock: It's come to value density over listenability. What a shame: When Aesop Rock wants to make sense, he's capable of brilliant lyrics, like the moving "Thank You," a memoir of mental illness appended as an unlisted bonus track to 2002's Daylight EP. Even when he's not particularly lucid, he can still come up with a zinger like "I found a cure for cancer, but it wasn't radio-friendly." Such lines are few and far between on None Shall Pass.

Halfhearted production doesn't help the album's case either. Musically, the title track is the only one that really stands out, thanks to a propulsive marimba pulse. It's the closest Aesop Rock has ever come to a club banger. Otherwise, despite a few distinctive touches here and there--acoustic guitar, jazzy electric piano--everything takes a backseat to the lyrics. The album's main sonic signature is a reliance on turntable scratching, often overdubbed and layered. El-P, who produces one track here, has made sensory-overload swing on his own solo albums, but his music's mood matches his lyrics' tone in a way that Aesop Rock doesn't here. The words are often impenetrable, the music merely functional. None shall pass, indeed.