Despite their divergent performances, the two rappers complement each other well. “[Def Jux] is a tight-knit community,” Aesop concedes—though he rejects the idea that El-P’s brand of gloomy industrial beats set the tone. “All the artists [on Def Jux] have very different sounds. Possibly there’s a similar mentality; everyone wants to make their own music.”

At the Boston show, Aesop and Lif made much of the former’s decision to give up smoking, even dropping a skit in the middle of the show to dramatize Aesop’s rejection of the nicotine temptation. Just over a week later, Aesop caved. “I’m trying to cut down, but it’s just too much when you’re touring,” he said in an interview.

Touring seems to have taken its toll on Aesop in other ways too. “I used to really like the songs [on Bazooka Tooth]. Now I’m just sick of them because we’ve just been performing them over and over again,” he says.

Def Jux and its artists are starting to get higher profiles. Both Aesop Rock and Mr. Lif are featured on MTV, who Aesop says interviewed him to do a show on the tour. “It’s a little scary,” says Aesop, “but I can wait it out. If the kids want to see the video, that’s fine by me.”

Aesop’s obscurity may have a lot to do the mainstream attention he’s starting to get. In the oft-predictable world of mainstream hip-hop, Aesop is a definite wild card. And while he says he doesn’t force obscurity, he does try to avoid sounding like anyone else, of which he seems quite proud.

“I get told that I’m weird—but you forget that the whole reason you liked [Boogie Down Productions] in the first place was because you never heard anything like that before.”

—Staff writer Andrew R. Iliff can be reached at iliff@fas.harvard.edu.