Aesop Rock first rapped over a Blockhead beat 24 years ago. At least, that was the first time that Aesop Rock rapped over a Blockhead beat on record. The Long Island rapper and the Manhattan beatmaker had become friends a few years earlier at Boston University. By the time Aesop self-released his 1997 debut album Music For Earthworms, Blockhead had already dropped out of college, though Aesop was still there. (He’d graduate a year later.) When Aesop made Music For Earthworms, he hadn’t yet become a name on the underground rap scene, and that underground rap scene — Stretch & Bobbito freestyles, 12″ singles sold at Fat Beats — wasn’t anywhere near as big as it would become a few years later. Aesop produced most of that album himself, but on the song “Plastic Soldiers,” he applied his darting, word-drunk flow to Blockhead’s mournfully stuttering violin loop.