- As 2019 draws to a close, it's worth admiring just how far hip-hop has come this decade. Assimilated by the internet, its culture has become more absurdist and its influences more extreme, co-habitated by chart-topping pop stars and underground radicals alike. Clipping have come to embody the latter's reckless sonic alchemy, first juxtaposing throwback gangsta rap with barren noise on 2013's midcity.
Subsequent releases have only broadened their artistic scope, tributing classic hip-hop with self-titled's authentic collaborations before soundtracking a galactic slave uprising on Splendor and Misery. There Existed and Addiction to Blood sees the group doubling down on their influences from both industrial noise and Southern hip-hop, blurring boundaries in a way few contemporaries could even conceive.
Clipping's production team is William Hutson and Jonathan Snipes, experimental music fanatics with years of experience in composition and sound design. Together they ply samples, field recordings, and sculpted synths into post-modern reconstructions of traditional hip-hop. Balancing this high-minded approach is MC Daveed Diggs, a true student of the game whose technical perfection is both his greatest asset and achilles heel. Few other hip-hop acts are as committed to experimentation, the group break genre boundaries at every turn and evolve their sound with each release.
Nothing Is Safe kicks off the record with gloomy overtones, outlining a no holds barred approach to some macabre themes. Daveed has never shied away from shock value but Addiction To Blood is a love poem to horrorcore. Tales of nightmarish encounters on dark streets combine with unsettlingly textured production to great effect: each song acts like a self-contained episode of Black Mirror without the woke technological revelations.
One such highlight is Run For Ya Life, featuring legendary Three Six Mafia member La Chat as a faceless nocturnal killer. The beat is heard from a moving car stereo on a busy night time street, lending an ambience that's as unnerving as it is authentic. A cross between classic Memphis rap and deconstructed club isn't something I knew I needed but the group's execution is near-flawless.
La Mala Ordina is another throwback cut boasting two fantastic features over an audacious boom-bap beat. It's a gratifying listen packed with cold-blooded bars that unravel as Daveed's final verse distorts into a wall of harsh noise by revered experimentalist The Rita. Hip-hop has toyed with industrial since the late 90s but rarely does an act commit so wholeheartedly to the fusion, dedicating a whole 2 minutes to the grating sonic torrent in a no-fucks-given display of influence.
Rock, paper, ice pick; nice trick, no homonym/
Cutouts from a magazine, make letters for your mom n them /
Who remember arts and crafts, these killers is artisans/
With an arsenal to elevate your arteries, start again.
Sarah Bernat and Pedestrian Deposit also contribute production to Club Down and Attunement respectively, making for Clipping's most textured and brutal songs to date. The former might be my song of the year with its unrelenting howls of corrosive reverb beneath Daveed's unbelievable spitting. His verses culminate in explosive flows before a final chorus that sees Diggs' trappin' into the shadow realm.
Classic horrorcore pushed the boundaries of lyricism but failed to back up its gritty encounters with fitting production. Here the pairing seems all too obvious as Clipping craft hopeless parables that animate gnarly instrumentals into something remarkably vivid. To detail the breadth of topics covered would be to deconstruct Daveed's every verse, a hallmark of his matured abilities as a writer.
Pointing out Diggs' robotic flows would be fair critique, they've been a notable sticking point for critics in the past. Moments on Story 7 and the aforementioned Nothing Is Safe see his tone and inflections at slight disparity with the weighty production, but it's easy to excuse when the tracklist packs this much ambition. Even the interludes, brief unsettling ambient tape pieces, do so much to bring each song together and form a cohesive whole. An 18 minute performance of Annea Lockwood's Piano Burning composition is a fittingly textured end.
There Existed An Addiction To Blood is endlessly impressive, capping off the group's accomplishments and cementing them as an integral part of experimental hip-hop. No one else is making music like this, and those who sound similar can't compete with Clipping's hardline creativity and genre-mashing. Plans to release another EP later this year send my mind reeling with possibilities, about both where the group and hip-hop can possibly go next.
- Boddhi Farmer.