“Really, my biggest risk was just the initial step to quit my day job to do music. I was packaging and shipping for an art gallery in Manhattan; I went to school for painting, so I always wanted to work around artwork, even though I wasn't really contributing anything to the scene.”

American rapper and producer

Aesop Rock is the stage name of Ian Matthias Bavitz, an American rapper and producer from the late 1990s and early 2000s underground and alternative hip-hop scene. He is known for being part of the wave of artists that helped define that era. He came to prominence on El-P’s Definitive Jux label, where he was signed until the label went on hiatus in 2010. In a 2010 retrospective, betterPropaganda ranked him 19th on its Top 100 Artists of the Decade list, reflecting the lasting attention his work had drawn within hip-hop.