I just have to praise this album again. I can't remember the last time I've listened to an album back-to-back so many times. Definitely picking this up when it's released.
Out of curiousity, what rap where you listening to 2 years ago?
After he answers this question, could you answer it too?
Looking at this photo, I don't think "brick" is appropriate to describe these things. They're much larger than a brick. They look more like large foundation stones, like you'd see foundations of pre-WW I homes, or stone masonry, if anything.
I just have to praise this album again. I can't remember the last time I've listened to an album back-to-back so many times. Definitely picking this up when it's released.
Out of curiousity, what rap where you listening to 2 years ago?
After he answers this question, could you answer it too?
2 years ago, 2004:
1).Whatever was on the radio 2). Assorted Kufied Rap Musicas 3). Various "Street Mix-Cd's a la Green Lantern
I just have to praise this album again. I can't remember the last time I've listened to an album back-to-back so many times. Definitely picking this up when it's released.
Out of curiousity, what rap where you listening to 2 years ago?
After he answers this question, could you answer it too?
I just have to praise this album again. I can't remember the last time I've listened to an album back-to-back so many times. Definitely picking this up when it's released.
Out of curiousity, what rap where you listening to 2 years ago?
After he answers this question, could you answer it too?
2 years ago, 2004:
1).Whatever was on the radio 2). Assorted Kufied Rap Musicas 3). Various "Street Mix-Cd's a la Green Lantern
I just have to praise this album again. I can't remember the last time I've listened to an album back-to-back so many times. Definitely picking this up when it's released.
Out of curiousity, what rap where you listening to 2 years ago?
After he answers this question, could you answer it too?
2 years ago, 2004:
1).Whatever was on the radio 2). Assorted Kufied Rap Musicas 3). Various "Street Mix-Cd's a la Green Lantern
That's terrific, but let's be specific.
I seriously can't remember, whatever was hot on the radio in the bay (and according to Johnny's observations of bay radio, stuff that still is hot ). 2004 was when the local bay scene was on the radio again *FANY HYPHY*. Shit, who else was popin' in '04? Game, Ying Yang...Whatever Timberland, Just Blaze, Lil' Jon was utting out...shit Love Below/Speaker Boxxx. Kanye...
2) Assorted Kufied Rap Musics: Dilla, SA-Ra, Dj Mitsu, Platinum Pied Pipers, and all a that
My initial question was that I was a little suprised a person like Dj Arcadian could get worked into a lather over this album when 2 years I think dude was barely into this type of rap and was really talking about Dj Shadow and Jurrasic 5.
My initial question was that I was a little suprised a person like Dj Arcadian could get worked into a lather over this album when 2 years I think dude was barely into this type of rap and was really talking about Dj Shadow and Jurrasic 5.
I just have to praise this album again. I can't remember the last time I've listened to an album back-to-back so many times. Definitely picking this up when it's released.
Out of curiousity, what rap where you listening to 2 years ago?
After he answers this question, could you answer it too?
2 years ago, 2004:
1).Whatever was on the radio 2). Assorted Kufied Rap Musicas 3). Various "Street Mix-Cd's a la Green Lantern
That's terrific, but let's be specific.
I seriously can't remember, whatever was hot on the radio in the bay (and according to Johnny's observations of bay radio, stuff that still is hot ). 2004 was when the local bay scene was on the radio again *FANY HYPHY*. Shit, who else was popin' in '04? Game, Ying Yang...Whatever Timberland, Just Blaze, Lil' Jon was utting out...shit Love Below/Speaker Boxxx. Kanye...
2) Assorted Kufied Rap Musics, such as Project Ambersunshower:
My initial question was that I was a little suprised a person like Dj Arcadian could get worked into a lather over this album when 2 years I think dude was barely into this type of rap and was really talking about Dj Shadow and Jurrasic 5.
I mean, if dude was exclusively f**king with DJ Shadow and Jurassic 5, I can understand why he feels like he hasn't heard a good album in years.
My initial question was that I was a little suprised a person like Dj Arcadian could get worked into a lather over this album when 2 years I think dude was barely into this type of rap and was really talking about Dj Shadow and Jurrasic 5.
My tastes are all over the place which makes it difficult to pin point exactly what I was listening to back in 2004. That being said, yes, there was some DJ Shadow, J5, some soul stuff, etc. I wouldn't say I was a complete backpacker but I certainly listen to more popular stuff now than back then.
It's also not that I enjoy Clipse. I hardly gave their first album a listen and still am not feeling their hit Grindin. Even the mixtapes (which I only heard recently) don't do it for me like Hell Hath No Fury does (although there's some killer shit on it).
My initial question was that I was a little suprised a person like Dj Arcadian could get worked into a lather over this album when 2 years I think dude was barely into this type of rap and was really talking about Dj Shadow and Jurrasic 5.
I hardly gave their first album a listen and still am not feeling their hit Grindin. Even the mixtapes (which I only heard recently) don't do it for me like Hell Hath No Fury does (although there's some killer shit on it).
I would argue the new album is almost entirely built around the Grindin/Cot Damn/When the Last Time sound....(save for the Bilal, juvenile-ha-like "Ain't cha", etc)
I hardly gave their first album a listen and still am not feeling their hit Grindin. Even the mixtapes (which I only heard recently) don't do it for me like Hell Hath No Fury does (although there's some killer shit on it).
I would argue the new album is almost entirely built around the Grindin/Cot Damn/When the Last Time sound....(save for the Bilal, juvenile-ha-like "Ain't cha", etc)
I hardly gave their first album a listen and still am not feeling their hit Grindin.
This is all in good nature....but DUDE!!??!?!??!?! The beat for "Grindin'" alone is one of the most distinct hip-hop beats ever.
Yeah, maybe but for so long I thought it was it was Jermaine Dupri rapping. Severally salted my opinion of the song. Still, even knowing the truth now I don't feel it. Admit it though, dude sounds severely like Dupri.
I hardly gave their first album a listen and still am not feeling their hit Grindin.
This is all in good nature....but DUDE!!??!?!??!?! The beat for "Grindin'" alone is one of the most distinct hip-hop beats ever.
Yeah, maybe but for so long I thought it was it was Jermaine Dupri rapping. Severally salted my opinion of the song. Still, even knowing the truth now I don't feel it. Admit it though, dude sounds severely like Dupri.
The Clipse is not a "dude"--there are two of them, neither of whom sounds anything like Jermaine Dupri.
Have you actually heard "Grindin'"?
I'm just wondering, because you're sounding like the little kid that claims to have seen a movie based on his older brother's description of it.
The narratives don't just rival the detailed rhymes of Ice Cube in the early days of N.W.A. or Ice-T in his "Original Gangster" prime, but blaxploitation soundtracks such as Curtis Mayfield's "Super Fly," Marvin Gaye's "Trouble Man" and Isaac Hayes' "Shaft," and the pulp novels of Iceberg Slim and Donald Goines.
I hardly gave their first album a listen and still am not feeling their hit Grindin.
This is all in good nature....but DUDE!!??!?!??!?! The beat for "Grindin'" alone is one of the most distinct hip-hop beats ever.
Yeah, maybe but for so long I thought it was it was Jermaine Dupri rapping. Severally salted my opinion of the song. Still, even knowing the truth now I don't feel it. Admit it though, dude sounds severely like Dupri.
The Clipse is not a "dude"--there are two of them, neither of whom sounds anything like Jermaine Dupri.
Have you actually heard "Grindin'"?
I'm just wondering, because you're sounding like the little kid that claims to have seen a movie based on his older brother's description of it.
The narratives don't just rival the detailed rhymes of Ice Cube in the early days of N.W.A. or Ice-T in his "Original Gangster" prime, but blaxploitation soundtracks such as Curtis Mayfield's "Super Fly," Marvin Gaye's "Trouble Man" and Isaac Hayes' "Shaft," and the pulp novels of Iceberg Slim and Donald Goines.
By Greg Kot Tribune music critic Published November 27, 2006
Cocaine-dealing and its consequences are the sole subjects of one of the year's best albums. In that seemingly narrow frame of reference, the Clipse fashion an epic tragedy that spans every human emotion.
On one level, the Virginia Beach duo's second album, "Hell Hath No Fury" (Startrak), out Tuesday, is a brutally efficient, filler-free 12-song cycle about a dirty business. Siblings Gene "Malice" Thornton and Terrence "Pusha T" Thornton make no concessions to pop trends: no gratuitous R&B-flavored choruses, no glitzy cameos. And there are no skits between tracks to disrupt the unrelentingly bleak mood.
But the album is only superficially about drugs. It's really about the people who sell the drugs, and why they do it. Clipse and producers the Neptunes create a cold-sweat world in which even the live-for-the-moment thrills are tinged by paranoia. The prospect of imminent imprisonment or death is as omnipresent as the kilograms of white powder that both poison the ghetto and fuel its most potent underground economy. The ruthlessness with which the coke dealer runs his business eventually consumes him, and Clipse are unsparing in portraying that empire as it rises and ultimately collapses in dementia and blood.
It is among the year's most fully realized albums in any genre, each track contributing an essential piece to the story. But at one time its release was in grave doubt.
Spartan sonic code
The Thornton brothers were high school friends of the Neptunes' Pharrell Williams in the '90s, and eventually debuted with Clipse's Neptunes-produced album "Lord Willin'" in 2002. A hit single, "Grindin'," established the duo's Spartan sonic code: a gray canvas of percussion on which drawled vocals sprayed brilliantly detailed narratives about a day in the life of a coke pusher.
Since then, countless hip-hop albums have turned drug-dealing into hitmaking currency. Meanwhile, the Clipse were put on hold when their former label was sold. A follow-up album was scrapped, but the duo remained vital by releasing a series of underground mix tapes. Now they're finally back with "Hell Hath No Fury," and if anything, they have taken the "Grindin'" template to its logical extreme: stripped-down narratives that vividly humanize -- and deglamorize -- an underworld of drugs, death, desperate thrills and paranoia.
To dismiss "Hell Hath No Fury" as a celebration or endorsement of drug-dealing is to miss the point completely. It doesn't judge its characters and in many ways empathizes with them. At the same time, it strongly suggests that they are doomed. This is a brilliantly realized first-person account of desperation, a portrait of street characters determined to grab all the life they can before they're mowed down: "All I wanna do is ride around shining while I can afford it," Pusha T declares.
The narratives don't just rival the detailed rhymes of Ice Cube in the early days of N.W.A. or Ice-T in his "Original Gangster" prime, but blaxploitation soundtracks such as Curtis Mayfield's "Super Fly," Marvin Gaye's "Trouble Man" and Isaac Hayes' "Shaft," and the pulp novels of Iceberg Slim and Donald Goines.
The voices in "Hell Hath No Fury" are deadpan, drained of emotion, but their words are vivid, sickly thrilling, as they describe an ominous world in journalistic detail. It's a world where money rules, and how it is acquired is beside the point.
"Cooperate, escape is useless/Trust me, I'm your friend/I'll talk you through this," the narrator hisses with a mixture of menace and reassurance in "Chinese New Year," a first-person account of a break-in and robbery.
The musical beds are dry and minimal, underpinned by beats that tick like time bombs and electronic noises that spread like an evil evening mist. A tambourine rattles menacingly in "Mr. Me Too," then just as abruptly stops. Steel drums, normally the bed for jovial Caribbean dance songs, take on a threatening tone in "Wamp Wamp." The clipped accordion bursts in "Momma I'm Sorry" suggest gasps.
Fleeing the ghetto
The narrators see the "Dirty Money" earned from drug dealing as their only option to escape the squalor of the ghetto. "I like you had to come up from under the basement," declares "Hello New World," a call to arms that holds a cracked mirror to the civil rights anthems of the '60s. "They keep trying to keep us down. . . . It's about time for us to come up and make a change."
"Keys Open Doors," set inside a crack house, sees kilograms of cocaine as the only way out, even at the risk of a prison term, or worse: "Open the frigidaire/25 to life in here/so much white you might think your holy Christ is near."
Defiance to the end
The dealer lives high ("Ride Around Shining"), but is always looking over his shoulder. He can't bring himself to apologize, even to his own mother ("Momma I'm Sorry"), instead offering only a death-bed statement of defiance: "I place you in a flower bed/Porcelain shower heads throughout the house/I keep the young-uns' mouths fed/And when I'm gone I hope it's said/I gave structure to the youth by the example I led."
By the end of the album, it's clear that the "example" he leaves is a cautionary one. The gospel-streaked ballad "Nightmares" is the mellowest track, and the most terrifying. It's an answer of sorts to the Geto Boys' 1991 crack-up classic "Mind Playing Tricks on Me," with the pusher no longer able to distinguish illusion from reality.
"I'm running from guilt/But it's right by my side," sings guest vocalist Bilal, "There's nowhere to hide."
This is real interesting to me cuz you're talking about a paper with one of the ten largest circulations in the country right now, not the internet rap nerd circle jerk...how this impacts people's view of the clipse in the context of all rap - its sort of strange because he's identifying certain qualities that make them good that could apply to a lot of artists critics have passed on for years and continue to pass over, but presents it as if the clipse are somehow different from 'the rest'
DocMcCoy"Go and laugh in your own country!" 5,917 Posts
This is real interesting to me cuz you're talking about a paper with one of the ten largest circulations in the country right now, not the internet rap nerd circle jerk...how this impacts people's view of the clipse in the context of all rap - its sort of strange because he's identifying certain qualities that make them good that could apply to a lot of artists critics have passed on for years and continue to pass over, but presents it as if the clipse are somehow different from 'the rest'
That's an interesting point. I think that, in much the same way as Kanye's involvement with Rhymefest and Lupe enabled them to get the sort of coverage that wouldn't normally be granted to their most obvious peers, so the involvement of the Neptunes, and the pop-crossover cachet they bring with them, might mean the Clipse get taken a little more "seriously" than, say, Rick Rawss.
Cocaine-dealing and its consequences are the sole subjects of one of the year's best albums. In that seemingly narrow frame of reference, the Clipse fashion an epic tragedy that spans every human emotion.
On one level, the Virginia Beach duo's second album, "Hell Hath No Fury" (Startrak), out Tuesday, is a brutally efficient, filler-free 12-song cycle about a dirty business. Siblings Gene "Malice" Thornton and Terrence "Pusha T" Thornton make no concessions to pop trends: no gratuitous R&B-flavored choruses, no glitzy cameos. And there are no skits between tracks to disrupt the unrelentingly bleak mood.
Um, the entire album is not about dealing. And is Bilal not an "R&B" singer now?
But yes, it's "brutally efficient" and there are, in fact, no skits.
It's not that deep though - take two equally skilled MCs with albums covering the same subject matter in the same way and add top notch production, full-album vision and craftsmanship to one... that one will make the heralded LP while the other will have a handfull of perhaps good - but ultimately disposable - tracks.
Maybe it's considered "rockist" to look for rap records with an overarching concept but I think that's what most non-internet-rap-geeks are looking for these days.
In the words of someone richer than me, it's gotta make you feel shit.
This album is fucking dope. Multiple listens from the South Philly stash house to the Connecticut compound solidified the deal - and it's even wifey approved.
Comments
What does the scorpion stand for?
Looking at this photo, I don't think "brick" is appropriate to describe these things. They're much larger than a brick. They look more like large foundation stones, like you'd see foundations of pre-WW I homes, or stone masonry, if anything.
http://www.petersonlandscape.com/gallery/stonework.htm
Peace
h
2 years ago, 2004:
1).Whatever was on the radio
2). Assorted Kufied Rap Musicas
3). Various "Street Mix-Cd's a la Green Lantern
Definitely NOT a back-to-back listen...
That's terrific, but let's be specific.
I seriously can't remember, whatever was hot on the radio in the bay (and according to Johnny's observations of bay radio, stuff that still is hot ). 2004 was when the local bay scene was on the radio again *FANY HYPHY*. Shit, who else was popin' in '04? Game, Ying Yang...Whatever Timberland, Just Blaze, Lil' Jon was utting out...shit Love Below/Speaker Boxxx. Kanye...
2) Assorted Kufied Rap Musics: Dilla, SA-Ra, Dj Mitsu, Platinum Pied Pipers, and all a that
My initial question was that I was a little suprised a person like Dj Arcadian could get worked into a lather over this album when 2 years I think dude was barely into this type of rap and was really talking about Dj Shadow and Jurrasic 5.
It seems like you've blown up his spot AYO!
I mean, if dude was exclusively f**king with DJ Shadow and Jurassic 5, I can understand why he feels like he hasn't heard a good album in years.
My tastes are all over the place which makes it difficult to pin point exactly what I was listening to back in 2004. That being said, yes, there was some DJ Shadow, J5, some soul stuff, etc. I wouldn't say I was a complete backpacker but I certainly listen to more popular stuff now than back then.
It's also not that I enjoy Clipse. I hardly gave their first album a listen and still am not feeling their hit Grindin. Even the mixtapes (which I only heard recently) don't do it for me like Hell Hath No Fury does (although there's some killer shit on it).
Ouch!
I would argue the new album is almost entirely built around the Grindin/Cot Damn/When the Last Time sound....(save for the Bilal, juvenile-ha-like "Ain't cha", etc)
Gotta keep doing what works!!!
This is all in good nature....but DUDE!!??!?!??!?! The beat for "Grindin'" alone is one of the most distinct hip-hop beats ever.
Yeah, maybe but for so long I thought it was it was Jermaine Dupri rapping. Severally salted my opinion of the song. Still, even knowing the truth now I don't feel it. Admit it though, dude sounds severely like Dupri.
I was one of those shameful nonbelievers who never really got into Lord Willin that much but this album is killin it for me right now.
This thread isn't just Soulstrut Classic Status???, it's contending for All Time Hall of Fame.
IS
11.28.2006
BEST BUY BETTER
HAVE 3
COPIES
READY
YADADAMEAN??????
BEST
BE
COPPIN
The Clipse is not a "dude"--there are two of them, neither of whom sounds anything like Jermaine Dupri.
Have you actually heard "Grindin'"?
I'm just wondering, because you're sounding like the little kid that claims to have seen a movie based on his older brother's description of it.
???
Not even worth responding to.
can you post the full article text?
thx
Clipse among year's most fully realized albums
Duo's 2nd CD examines people who deal drugs[/b]
http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/chi-0611270017nov27,1,2670770.story?ctrack=1&cset=true
By Greg Kot
Tribune music critic
Published November 27, 2006
Cocaine-dealing and its consequences are the sole subjects of one of the year's best albums. In that seemingly narrow frame of reference, the Clipse fashion an epic tragedy that spans every human emotion.
On one level, the Virginia Beach duo's second album, "Hell Hath No Fury" (Startrak), out Tuesday, is a brutally efficient, filler-free 12-song cycle about a dirty business. Siblings Gene "Malice" Thornton and Terrence "Pusha T" Thornton make no concessions to pop trends: no gratuitous R&B-flavored choruses, no glitzy cameos. And there are no skits between tracks to disrupt the unrelentingly bleak mood.
But the album is only superficially about drugs. It's really about the people who sell the drugs, and why they do it. Clipse and producers the Neptunes create a cold-sweat world in which even the live-for-the-moment thrills are tinged by paranoia. The prospect of imminent imprisonment or death is as omnipresent as the kilograms of white powder that both poison the ghetto and fuel its most potent underground economy. The ruthlessness with which the coke dealer runs his business eventually consumes him, and Clipse are unsparing in portraying that empire as it rises and ultimately collapses in dementia and blood.
It is among the year's most fully realized albums in any genre, each track contributing an essential piece to the story. But at one time its release was in grave doubt.
Spartan sonic code
The Thornton brothers were high school friends of the Neptunes' Pharrell Williams in the '90s, and eventually debuted with Clipse's Neptunes-produced album "Lord Willin'" in 2002. A hit single, "Grindin'," established the duo's Spartan sonic code: a gray canvas of percussion on which drawled vocals sprayed brilliantly detailed narratives about a day in the life of a coke pusher.
Since then, countless hip-hop albums have turned drug-dealing into hitmaking currency. Meanwhile, the Clipse were put on hold when their former label was sold. A follow-up album was scrapped, but the duo remained vital by releasing a series of underground mix tapes. Now they're finally back with "Hell Hath No Fury," and if anything, they have taken the "Grindin'" template to its logical extreme: stripped-down narratives that vividly humanize -- and deglamorize -- an underworld of drugs, death, desperate thrills and paranoia.
To dismiss "Hell Hath No Fury" as a celebration or endorsement of drug-dealing is to miss the point completely. It doesn't judge its characters and in many ways empathizes with them. At the same time, it strongly suggests that they are doomed. This is a brilliantly realized first-person account of desperation, a portrait of street characters determined to grab all the life they can before they're mowed down: "All I wanna do is ride around shining while I can afford it," Pusha T declares.
The narratives don't just rival the detailed rhymes of Ice Cube in the early days of N.W.A. or Ice-T in his "Original Gangster" prime, but blaxploitation soundtracks such as Curtis Mayfield's "Super Fly," Marvin Gaye's "Trouble Man" and Isaac Hayes' "Shaft," and the pulp novels of Iceberg Slim and Donald Goines.
The voices in "Hell Hath No Fury" are deadpan, drained of emotion, but their words are vivid, sickly thrilling, as they describe an ominous world in journalistic detail. It's a world where money rules, and how it is acquired is beside the point.
"Cooperate, escape is useless/Trust me, I'm your friend/I'll talk you through this," the narrator hisses with a mixture of menace and reassurance in "Chinese New Year," a first-person account of a break-in and robbery.
The musical beds are dry and minimal, underpinned by beats that tick like time bombs and electronic noises that spread like an evil evening mist. A tambourine rattles menacingly in "Mr. Me Too," then just as abruptly stops. Steel drums, normally the bed for jovial Caribbean dance songs, take on a threatening tone in "Wamp Wamp." The clipped accordion bursts in "Momma I'm Sorry" suggest gasps.
Fleeing the ghetto
The narrators see the "Dirty Money" earned from drug dealing as their only option to escape the squalor of the ghetto. "I like you had to come up from under the basement," declares "Hello New World," a call to arms that holds a cracked mirror to the civil rights anthems of the '60s. "They keep trying to keep us down. . . . It's about time for us to come up and make a change."
"Keys Open Doors," set inside a crack house, sees kilograms of cocaine as the only way out, even at the risk of a prison term, or worse: "Open the frigidaire/25 to life in here/so much white you might think your holy Christ is near."
Defiance to the end
The dealer lives high ("Ride Around Shining"), but is always looking over his shoulder. He can't bring himself to apologize, even to his own mother ("Momma I'm Sorry"), instead offering only a death-bed statement of defiance: "I place you in a flower bed/Porcelain shower heads throughout the house/I keep the young-uns' mouths fed/And when I'm gone I hope it's said/I gave structure to the youth by the example I led."
By the end of the album, it's clear that the "example" he leaves is a cautionary one. The gospel-streaked ballad "Nightmares" is the mellowest track, and the most terrifying. It's an answer of sorts to the Geto Boys' 1991 crack-up classic "Mind Playing Tricks on Me," with the pusher no longer able to distinguish illusion from reality.
"I'm running from guilt/But it's right by my side," sings guest vocalist Bilal, "There's nowhere to hide."
That's an interesting point. I think that, in much the same way as Kanye's involvement with Rhymefest and Lupe enabled them to get the sort of coverage that wouldn't normally be granted to their most obvious peers, so the involvement of the Neptunes, and the pop-crossover cachet they bring with them, might mean the Clipse get taken a little more "seriously" than, say, Rick Rawss.
Um, the entire album is not about dealing. And is Bilal not an "R&B" singer now?
But yes, it's "brutally efficient" and there are, in fact, no skits.
Maybe it's considered "rockist" to look for rap records with an overarching concept but I think that's what most non-internet-rap-geeks are looking for these days.
In the words of someone richer than me, it's gotta make you feel shit.