this album to me is incredible, because its like the sounds for the majority are limited to synths. if u asked me 15 years ago to define hip hop, it would be something along the lines of "rap" over beats with loops grabbed from some sample. the thing is that, that would actually also be someone's definition of hip hop who didnt take the genre seriously dismissing it as "ripping off" other people's music and dont really respect it. well with that south stuff and albums like these, they are their own source, sampling is not a mandatory thing (though really effective if done creatively). if that can't get hip hop music defined as an artist's genre, then phuck them. so i mean going through the whole album, its like majorly synth based and to a very creative extent. i dont know if any of this made sense to you, but i feel that's what defines this album for me, and generally i hate synth sounds. i usually dont listen to nightmares, but its a humbling song to end the album with.
clipse's flow to tight beats like this is off the chain. this shit has grabbed me.
I picked this up yesterday (full price, suckers???s???nothin???), and I think dudes trying to graft onto this record some overarching concept or some moral underpinning are reaching. I can appreciate the impulse, because for many reasons (reasons, it should be noted, that are being missed by many of the over-literal smart-dumb vivisectors around here who have mistaken all the hubbub for something having to do with originality or message or subject-verb agreement or some similarly irrelevant shit) this record doesn???t feel like just another record, but, I mean, come on now: When every expression of paranoia or regret is a single pea under mattress after mattress of coke, money, lifestyle, and coke-money lifestyle, reading it as a moral tale takes an unseemly amount of princeliness. I think this insistence on the album???s progress or movement (from victim to victimizer, from underdog to top dog, from braggadocio to remorse, etc.) rings false because part of what???s really hitting me is the brilliant static quality of this record. Nothing on here goes anywhere. Every single song on this thing traces a very small circle--sell crack, get money, spend money, feel vague regret, but then get back to business--but traces it repeatedly, deeper every time, and with perfect focus. And it???s this repetition, this relentlessness, this inescapable acting-out of the same sequence and following the same circuit track after track after track that gives the whole thing its hypnotic gravity. It makes no sense at all to hold up individual lyrics and say, ???See, these guys are smart because they know that the crack game is destructive, they know that wealth has made them paranoid and incapable of love, and I know that they know because they say it once in this one song and again in this other and???.??? Please miss me with that shit. Whatever this record accomplishes, it does so not by talking about it, but by feeling like it. Just like Velvet Underground???s ???Heroin??? succeeds not because it says ???Man, heroin sure is fucked??? but because it feels magnetic and horrifying, or just like There???s A Riot Goin??? On succeeds not because it says ???Fuck you, hippies???shit is real??? but because it feels dystopian and personal and cauterized and utterly non-communal, Hell Hath No Fury succeeds not by pointing out the traps of the crack game, but by feeling, on every conceivable level, trapped. Everything that happens in these songs feels like it's already happened--no real history, no important future, just...done. Time is flat. Everything just is. For all the references to jets and Europe and globe-trotting hither and yon, I hear no exterior at all in this record???it???s all driver???s seats and cockpits and showrooms and hotel rooms and front rooms and VIP rooms and rooms with walls that seem to be closing in because they are. It's the airtight coffin that won't let the body decompose, yunno? You won???t get that listening to one cut or quoting one verse; it's all in the accumulation. They keep piling on detail after detail because, after all, what else can they do? Shit just keeps coming, but their circle isn't getting any bigger.
And the music knows this, too. All the beats are big, but not one of them sounds open to me. Just like the lyrics, they all sound both inescapable and incapable of escaping themselves, just evil and broke-dick, grindstone after grindstone. No whole drums anywhere???those that are shiny are broken (the clipped cymbal fills in "Dirty Money"), and those that are healthy are obscured (the massive rolls buried alive under "Hello New World"). There???s all these bits of hand percussion beating cloven hooves under everything, and from the wheezing squeezebox in ???Mama I???m So Sorry??? to the muzzy keyboard nag in ???Dirty Money??? to the unintelligible spoken-word particulate that clogs some distant filter in the deep background of ???Trill,??? the whole thing just sounds enormous and syphilitic. As a setting for the above, it couldn???t be more perfect. I don???t expect to hear a record this good for quite a while.
And who the fuck is mistaking this for a club record?
I picked this up yesterday (full price, suckers???s???nothin???), and I think dudes trying to graft onto this record some overarching concept or some moral underpinning are reaching. I can appreciate the impulse, because for many reasons (reasons, it should be noted, that are being missed by many of the over-literal smart-dumb vivisectors around here who have mistaken all the hubbub for something having to do with originality or message or subject-verb agreement or some similarly irrelevant shit) this record doesn???t feel like just another record, but, I mean, come on now: When every expression of paranoia or regret is a single pea under mattress after mattress of coke, money, lifestyle, and coke-money lifestyle, reading it as a moral tale takes an unseemly amount of princeliness. I think this insistence on the album???s progress or movement (from victim to victimizer, from underdog to top dog, from braggadocio to remorse, etc.) rings false because part of what???s really hitting me is the brilliant static quality of this record. Nothing on here goes anywhere. Every single song on this thing traces a very small circle--sell crack, get money, spend money, feel vague regret, but then get back to business--but traces it repeatedly, deeper every time, and with perfect focus. And it???s this repetition, this relentlessness, this inescapable acting-out of the same sequence and following the same circuit track after track after track that gives the whole thing its hypnotic gravity. It makes no sense at all to hold up individual lyrics and say, ???See, these guys are smart because they know that the crack game is destructive, they know that wealth has made them paranoid and incapable of love, and I know that they know because they say it once in this one song and again in this other and???.??? Please miss me with that shit. Whatever this record accomplishes, it does so not by talking about it, but by feeling like it. Just like Velvet Underground???s ???Heroin??? succeeds not because it says ???Man, heroin sure is fucked??? but because it feels magnetic and horrifying, or just like There???s A Riot Goin??? On succeeds not because it says ???Fuck you, hippies???shit is real??? but because it feels dystopian and personal and cauterized and utterly non-communal, Hell Hath No Fury succeeds not by pointing out the traps of the crack game, but by feeling, on every conceivable level, trapped. Everything that happens in these songs feels like it's already happened--no real history, no important future, just...done. Time is flat. Everything just is. For all the references to jets and Europe and globe-trotting hither and yon, I hear no exterior at all in this record???it???s all driver???s seats and cockpits and showrooms and hotel rooms and front rooms and VIP rooms and rooms with walls that seem to be closing in because they are. It's the airtight coffin that won't let the body decompose, yunno? You won???t get that listening to one cut or quoting one verse; it's all in the accumulation. They keep piling on detail after detail because, after all, what else can they do? Shit just keeps coming, but their circle isn't getting any bigger.
And the music knows this, too. All the beats are big, but not one of them sounds open to me. Just like the lyrics, they all sound both inescapable and incapable of escaping themselves, just evil and broke-dick, grindstone after grindstone. No whole drums anywhere???those that are shiny are broken (the clipped cymbal fills in "Dirty Money"), and those that are healthy are obscured (the massive rolls buried alive under "Hello New World"). There???s all these bits of hand percussion beating cloven hooves under everything, and from the wheezing squeezebox in ???Mama I???m So Sorry??? to the muzzy keyboard nag in ???Dirty Money??? to the unintelligible spoken-word particulate that clogs some distant filter in the deep background of ???Trill,??? the whole thing just sounds enormous and syphilitic. As a setting for the above, it couldn???t be more perfect. I don???t expect to hear a record this good for quite a while.
And who the fuck is mistaking this for a club record?
^^^^^Absolutely great post you're selling me on it!
james, you just made deej wet himself.
Please try to exercise greater restraint in the future when confronted with such leaky personalities.
lord my shit wouldnt be so wet all the time if you weren't always on my dick
srsly if someone's going to bother to give a shit enough to actually explain why they like something then they deserve soem RESPEK. I dont even think the album is as good as all that but i think he captured whats good about it better than any of the fawning articles i've read or any of the bandwagon jumping/ rill-rap-hatting going on this thread.
DocMcCoy"Go and laugh in your own country!" 5,917 Posts
Yeah, I like this one a lot, too.
I picked this up yesterday (full price, suckers???s???nothin???), and I think dudes trying to graft onto this record some overarching concept or some moral underpinning are reaching. I can appreciate the impulse, because for many reasons (reasons, it should be noted, that are being missed by many of the over-literal smart-dumb vivisectors around here who have mistaken all the hubbub for something having to do with originality or message or subject-verb agreement or some similarly irrelevant shit) this record doesn???t feel like just another record, but, I mean, come on now: When every expression of paranoia or regret is a single pea under mattress after mattress of coke, money, lifestyle, and coke-money lifestyle, reading it as a moral tale takes an unseemly amount of princeliness. I think this insistence on the album???s progress or movement (from victim to victimizer, from underdog to top dog, from braggadocio to remorse, etc.) rings false because part of what???s really hitting me is the brilliant static quality of this record. Nothing on here goes anywhere. Every single song on this thing traces a very small circle--sell crack, get money, spend money, feel vague regret, but then get back to business--but traces it repeatedly, deeper every time, and with perfect focus. And it???s this repetition, this relentlessness, this inescapable acting-out of the same sequence and following the same circuit track after track after track that gives the whole thing its hypnotic gravity. It makes no sense at all to hold up individual lyrics and say, ???See, these guys are smart because they know that the crack game is destructive, they know that wealth has made them paranoid and incapable of love, and I know that they know because they say it once in this one song and again in this other and???.??? Please miss me with that shit. Whatever this record accomplishes, it does so not by talking about it, but by feeling like it. Just like Velvet Underground???s ???Heroin??? succeeds not because it says ???Man, heroin sure is fucked??? but because it feels magnetic and horrifying, or just like There???s A Riot Goin??? On succeeds not because it says ???Fuck you, hippies???shit is real??? but because it feels dystopian and personal and cauterized and utterly non-communal, Hell Hath No Fury succeeds not by pointing out the traps of the crack game, but by feeling, on every conceivable level, trapped. Everything that happens in these songs feels like it's already happened--no real history, no important future, just...done. Time is flat. Everything just is. For all the references to jets and Europe and globe-trotting hither and yon, I hear no exterior at all in this record???it???s all driver???s seats and cockpits and showrooms and hotel rooms and front rooms and VIP rooms and rooms with walls that seem to be closing in because they are. It's the airtight coffin that won't let the body decompose, yunno? You won???t get that listening to one cut or quoting one verse; it's all in the accumulation. They keep piling on detail after detail because, after all, what else can they do? Shit just keeps coming, but their circle isn't getting any bigger.
And the music knows this, too. All the beats are big, but not one of them sounds open to me. Just like the lyrics, they all sound both inescapable and incapable of escaping themselves, just evil and broke-dick, grindstone after grindstone. No whole drums anywhere???those that are shiny are broken (the clipped cymbal fills in "Dirty Money"), and those that are healthy are obscured (the massive rolls buried alive under "Hello New World"). There???s all these bits of hand percussion beating cloven hooves under everything, and from the wheezing squeezebox in ???Mama I???m So Sorry??? to the muzzy keyboard nag in ???Dirty Money??? to the unintelligible spoken-word particulate that clogs some distant filter in the deep background of ???Trill,??? the whole thing just sounds enormous and syphilitic. As a setting for the above, it couldn???t be more perfect. I don???t expect to hear a record this good for quite a while.
And who the fuck is mistaking this for a club record?
Time's a wastin n***as doin so much hatin free ya heart and show ya greatness i like you, had to come from up under the basement just like you, had Satan tryin my patience still you look at me thru jealous eyes i wish to see yo my n***as rise UP get that money, put the nines up piggyback from out the ghetto 'for time's up n***as RUSH
I picked this up yesterday (full price, suckers???s???nothin???), and I think dudes trying to graft onto this record some overarching concept or some moral underpinning are reaching. I can appreciate the impulse, because for many reasons (reasons, it should be noted, that are being missed by many of the over-literal smart-dumb vivisectors around here who have mistaken all the hubbub for something having to do with originality or message or subject-verb agreement or some similarly irrelevant shit) this record doesn???t feel like just another record, but, I mean, come on now: When every expression of paranoia or regret is a single pea under mattress after mattress of coke, money, lifestyle, and coke-money lifestyle, reading it as a moral tale takes an unseemly amount of princeliness. I think this insistence on the album???s progress or movement (from victim to victimizer, from underdog to top dog, from braggadocio to remorse, etc.) rings false because part of what???s really hitting me is the brilliant static quality of this record. Nothing on here goes anywhere. Every single song on this thing traces a very small circle--sell crack, get money, spend money, feel vague regret, but then get back to business--but traces it repeatedly, deeper every time, and with perfect focus. And it???s this repetition, this relentlessness, this inescapable acting-out of the same sequence and following the same circuit track after track after track that gives the whole thing its hypnotic gravity. It makes no sense at all to hold up individual lyrics and say, ???See, these guys are smart because they know that the crack game is destructive, they know that wealth has made them paranoid and incapable of love, and I know that they know because they say it once in this one song and again in this other and???.??? Please miss me with that shit. Whatever this record accomplishes, it does so not by talking about it, but by feeling like it. Just like Velvet Underground???s ???Heroin??? succeeds not because it says ???Man, heroin sure is fucked??? but because it feels magnetic and horrifying, or just like There???s A Riot Goin??? On succeeds not because it says ???Fuck you, hippies???shit is real??? but because it feels dystopian and personal and cauterized and utterly non-communal, Hell Hath No Fury succeeds not by pointing out the traps of the crack game, but by feeling, on every conceivable level, trapped. Everything that happens in these songs feels like it's already happened--no real history, no important future, just...done. Time is flat. Everything just is. For all the references to jets and Europe and globe-trotting hither and yon, I hear no exterior at all in this record???it???s all driver???s seats and cockpits and showrooms and hotel rooms and front rooms and VIP rooms and rooms with walls that seem to be closing in because they are. It's the airtight coffin that won't let the body decompose, yunno? You won???t get that listening to one cut or quoting one verse; it's all in the accumulation. They keep piling on detail after detail because, after all, what else can they do? Shit just keeps coming, but their circle isn't getting any bigger.
And the music knows this, too. All the beats are big, but not one of them sounds open to me. Just like the lyrics, they all sound both inescapable and incapable of escaping themselves, just evil and broke-dick, grindstone after grindstone. No whole drums anywhere???those that are shiny are broken (the clipped cymbal fills in "Dirty Money"), and those that are healthy are obscured (the massive rolls buried alive under "Hello New World"). There???s all these bits of hand percussion beating cloven hooves under everything, and from the wheezing squeezebox in ???Mama I???m So Sorry??? to the muzzy keyboard nag in ???Dirty Money??? to the unintelligible spoken-word particulate that clogs some distant filter in the deep background of ???Trill,??? the whole thing just sounds enormous and syphilitic. As a setting for the above, it couldn???t be more perfect. I don???t expect to hear a record this good for quite a while.
And who the fuck is mistaking this for a club record?
James,
Isn't this a fancy way of justifying that they are saying the SAME shit over and over again? I guarantee you, if anybody else wrote something as eloquent as this in regards to anybody else with limited range, fools on here would be STRAIGHT CLOWNING. Stealing new locations, bringing up a quote or two every time dude makes a new post, etc.
I bought this album today, listened to it with accompanying cold weather - today's the first day it's been "cold" per Tucson standards - as I feel this is a winterish record and I STILL hear nothing mindblowing. I hear them and I can feel them to an extent, but it doesn't seem as serious as a lot of you claim it to be. C'mon, do you guys honestly believe that these guys are STILL deep in the crack game? Personally, it takes a certain hunger for me to truly feel (and believe) somebody's struggle. Dudes jump on Jay-Z 'cause he stays on that crack shit knowing damn well how far removed he is. I think it's pretty obvious that Pharell ain't NEVER sold anything but music in his life so his attempts at covering the subject are corny as fuck. These dudes have been under Pharell for - what? - 5-6 years now? You REALLY think he'd jeopardize his investment by letting them stay in the streets? You honestly believe they ain't spend one rap-related dollar in 3 years or whatever?
Now please believe, I COMPLETELY understand the whole "artist as a voice" thing, so I can understand why their content is relevant, but shit, as classic as Curtis' "Pusherman" is, that wasn't ALL he had for the people. (I know, I know, nobody here is comparing Clipse to Curtis, just trying to make a point about topic range.) The one "remorse/paranoia" song on here is the one that most people on here don't seem to care for ("Nightmares").
And in regard to the beats, I think it's safe to say that if anybody else used these, they would be regarded as - for lack of a better term - wack. (For the record, I like the beats and I can appreciate the fact that they went against the norm ie. mainstream club shit, but I can also appreciate a good beat regardless of whose album it may be on.) Tell me some of these beats wouldn't fit perfectly on say, an MF Doom album. Shit, "Dirty Money" is straight up lo-fi Cody Chestnutt.
They're witty, yes. Wordplay is beautiful. Their descriptions are inspiring. I can tell they spent a lot of time with each line, but the bottom line is, as much as they can say say something different, they can't seem to say anything different. (Does that make sense?)
Herm
P.S. Why do these guys get a "questionable name-dropping" pass? Jay can't shoutout Sex & The City or My Chemical Romance without catching clownage, but these dudes are talking about Desperate Housewives and fucking Cheaters, not to mention Bape this, BBC that.
you fanboys owe me 9.99. I bought it, listened to it with an open mind and I was straight-up bored with it. It was a chore to sit through the whole thing to be real honest. The only thing that makes the album redeemable are some of the lines that the Clipse say and seeing what the Neptunes where trying to accomplish (do something different) but really this album is pretty much filler past "mr me too", "riding around....", the intro track, and "paranoid".
I also coped the Snoop CD.......Just 3 songs into it and it blows the Clipse album away.
I read all 11 pages of this and the only opinions I really cared about were those who seemed not to come into talking about this album with an agenda
If Kingmoist and Herm don't like it, it matters
if clipse flag wavers praise this it means nothing to me.
so far I'm not all that moved to buy it, I wish I DL'd it when it was up so I can gt a better idea.
Last new rap CD I bought was Snoop and before that it was De La's mixtape maybe I'm not the target audience (I don't have delusions of crack sales or BAPE fashion).
still wouldn't mind hearing some of the praise worthy songs mentioned though (Trill, etc)
I really like the song "Chinese New Year", but there should have been a line about "Heads bursting like Pomelos" cause that would have been, like, deep and stuff and cause I like Pomelos. And then maybe "pomelo" could become street slang for crack and dudes would be like "yo son, I gotta slang these pomelos". And pomelos are round and it gets back to that circular thing that James was talking about cause when shit is round its like deep like the universe and shit. Like yin yang, the circle of life and that snake that swallows its tail.
I like Jame's review better than i like the album.
Im not really big on music that doesnt go anywhere though. I understand thats part of the aesthetic, but i still wish something else happened on some of those beats.
The wordplay is on point, and i like it better now than i did when i first heard it. But i dont think its that Jesus Christ coming back to earth to fuck shit up amazing either.
Its a hot album. Id rather listen to lil wayne though
Isn't this a fancy way of justifying that they are saying the SAME shit over and over again? I guarantee you, if anybody else wrote something as eloquent as this in regards to anybody else with limited range, fools on here would be STRAIGHT CLOWNING. Stealing new locations, bringing up a quote or two every time dude makes a new post, etc.
While I don't think I'm half as eloquent as James was here, I would still say from experience this is on point.
I bought this album today, listened to it with accompanying cold weather - today's the first day it's been "cold" per Tucson standards - as I feel this is a winterish record and I STILL hear nothing mindblowing. I hear them and I can feel them to an extent, but it doesn't seem as serious as a lot of you claim it to be. C'mon, do you guys honestly believe that these guys are STILL deep in the crack game? Personally, it takes a certain hunger for me to truly feel (and believe) somebody's struggle. Dudes jump on Jay-Z 'cause he stays on that crack shit knowing damn well how far removed he is. I think it's pretty obvious that Pharell ain't NEVER sold anything but music in his life so his attempts at covering the subject are corny as fuck. These dudes have been under Pharell for - what? - 5-6 years now? You REALLY think he'd jeopardize his investment by letting them stay in the streets? You honestly believe they ain't spend one rap-related dollar in 3 years or whatever?
Now please believe, I COMPLETELY understand the whole "artist as a voice" thing, so I can understand why their content is relevant, but shit, as classic as Curtis' "Pusherman" is, that wasn't ALL he had for the people. (I know, I know, nobody here is comparing Clipse to Curtis, just trying to make a point about topic range.) The one "remorse/paranoia" song on here is the one that most people on here don't seem to care for ("Nightmares").
And in regard to the beats, I think it's safe to say that if anybody else used these, they would be regarded as - for lack of a better term - wack. (For the record, I like the beats and I can appreciate the fact that they went against the norm ie. mainstream club shit, but I can also appreciate a good beat regardless of whose album it may be on.) Tell me some of these beats wouldn't fit perfectly on say, an MF Doom album. Shit, "Dirty Money" is straight up lo-fi Cody Chestnutt.
They're witty, yes. Wordplay is beautiful. Their descriptions are inspiring. I can tell they spent a lot of time with each line, but the bottom line is, as much as they can say say something different, they can't seem to say anything different. (Does that make sense?)
Herm
P.S. Why do these guys get a "questionable name-dropping" pass? Jay can't shoutout Sex & The City or My Chemical Romance without catching clownage, but these dudes are talking about Desperate Housewives and fucking Cheaters, not to mention Bape this, BBC that.
I'm definitely more on yr side here than anyone boosting this as a 'best rap of the year' album or something, but what is good about his defense of the album is, well, it accurately describes the album. You could easily take all of his descriptions and flip them so they explain why yr disappointed in this record. I'm just glad that people talking about how this is are putting together an argument that actually sounds like they listened to the album and didn't just read about it.
I can see why Herm doesn't like it, although I don't really see why "range" is really an applicable quality in music.
The Ramones are one of the best bands ever, but not because, on several tracks, they brought in a sitar player, while on others they used the London Symphony Orchestra... with lyrics addressing a wide variety of topics over, alternately, three-chord punk and avant solo cello.
I don't really see what's so hard to "get" about this album. It's very bleak, stark, and the focus is incredible (IMO, i suppose). I get lost in the details of the production and the way the whole record sounds, from open to close. I don't really want the lyrics to be different. First off, it wouldn't quite make sense in the sonic context of the record and second, it's what I expect from Clipse. If I wanted different subject matter I'd find a different artist.
I can see why Herm doesn't like it, although I don't really see why "range" is really an applicable quality in music.
The Ramones are one of the best bands ever, but not because, on several tracks, they brought in a sitar player, while on others they used the London Symphony Orchestra... with lyrics addressing a wide variety of topics over, alternately, three-chord punk and avant solo cello.
I don't really see what's so hard to "get" about this album. It's very bleak, stark, and the focus is incredible (IMO, i suppose). I get lost in the details of the production and the way the whole record sounds, from open to close. I don't really want the lyrics to be different. First off, it wouldn't quite make sense in the sonic context of the record and second, it's what I expect from Clipse. If I wanted different subject matter I'd find a different artist.
I don't write as well as James, though.
A friend of mine compared this album to a really good hardcore record. Same-y but really great in spite of that.
Comments
Once again it is on!
p.s. My hair looks PERFECT today.
Hey 33third, if your store gets this, will you inform us (or me)? Thanks.
I think it's the best "rap album" of the year and in a long while!
clipse's flow to tight beats like this is off the chain. this shit has grabbed me.
I picked this up yesterday (full price, suckers???s???nothin???), and I think dudes trying to graft onto this record some overarching concept or some moral underpinning are reaching. I can appreciate the impulse, because for many reasons (reasons, it should be noted, that are being missed by many of the over-literal smart-dumb vivisectors around here who have mistaken all the hubbub for something having to do with originality or message or subject-verb agreement or some similarly irrelevant shit) this record doesn???t feel like just another record, but, I mean, come on now: When every expression of paranoia or regret is a single pea under mattress after mattress of coke, money, lifestyle, and coke-money lifestyle, reading it as a moral tale takes an unseemly amount of princeliness. I think this insistence on the album???s progress or movement (from victim to victimizer, from underdog to top dog, from braggadocio to remorse, etc.) rings false because part of what???s really hitting me is the brilliant static quality of this record. Nothing on here goes anywhere. Every single song on this thing traces a very small circle--sell crack, get money, spend money, feel vague regret, but then get back to business--but traces it repeatedly, deeper every time, and with perfect focus. And it???s this repetition, this relentlessness, this inescapable acting-out of the same sequence and following the same circuit track after track after track that gives the whole thing its hypnotic gravity. It makes no sense at all to hold up individual lyrics and say, ???See, these guys are smart because they know that the crack game is destructive, they know that wealth has made them paranoid and incapable of love, and I know that they know because they say it once in this one song and again in this other and???.??? Please miss me with that shit. Whatever this record accomplishes, it does so not by talking about it, but by feeling like it. Just like Velvet Underground???s ???Heroin??? succeeds not because it says ???Man, heroin sure is fucked??? but because it feels magnetic and horrifying, or just like There???s A Riot Goin??? On succeeds not because it says ???Fuck you, hippies???shit is real??? but because it feels dystopian and personal and cauterized and utterly non-communal, Hell Hath No Fury succeeds not by pointing out the traps of the crack game, but by feeling, on every conceivable level, trapped. Everything that happens in these songs feels like it's already happened--no real history, no important future, just...done. Time is flat. Everything just is. For all the references to jets and Europe and globe-trotting hither and yon, I hear no exterior at all in this record???it???s all driver???s seats and cockpits and showrooms and hotel rooms and front rooms and VIP rooms and rooms with walls that seem to be closing in because they are. It's the airtight coffin that won't let the body decompose, yunno? You won???t get that listening to one cut or quoting one verse; it's all in the accumulation. They keep piling on detail after detail because, after all, what else can they do? Shit just keeps coming, but their circle isn't getting any bigger.
And the music knows this, too. All the beats are big, but not one of them sounds open to me. Just like the lyrics, they all sound both inescapable and incapable of escaping themselves, just evil and broke-dick, grindstone after grindstone. No whole drums anywhere???those that are shiny are broken (the clipped cymbal fills in "Dirty Money"), and those that are healthy are obscured (the massive rolls buried alive under "Hello New World"). There???s all these bits of hand percussion beating cloven hooves under everything, and from the wheezing squeezebox in ???Mama I???m So Sorry??? to the muzzy keyboard nag in ???Dirty Money??? to the unintelligible spoken-word particulate that clogs some distant filter in the deep background of ???Trill,??? the whole thing just sounds enormous and syphilitic. As a setting for the above, it couldn???t be more perfect. I don???t expect to hear a record this good for quite a while.
And who the fuck is mistaking this for a club record?
you're selling me on it!
yeh i am working on it right now...
exactly.
Hi James.
You're sorely missed around these parts.
james, you just made deej wet himself.
Please try to exercise greater restraint in the future when confronted with such leaky personalities.
srsly if someone's going to bother to give a shit enough to actually explain why they like something then they deserve soem RESPEK. I dont even think the album is as good as all that but i think he captured whats good about it better than any of the fawning articles i've read or any of the bandwagon jumping/ rill-rap-hatting going on this thread.
seriously, i'm floored.
Anatomically, there's some confusion going on here.
Uh, I didn't write the original retort. You did. Why rise to the bait if you know it's bait?
anyway, back to the issue at hand...
What he said.
The End.
n***as doin so much hatin
free ya heart and show ya greatness
i like you, had to come from up under the basement
just like you, had Satan tryin my patience
still you look at me thru jealous eyes
i wish to see yo my n***as rise UP
get that money, put the nines up
piggyback from out the ghetto 'for time's up
n***as RUSH
James,
Isn't this a fancy way of justifying that they are saying the SAME shit over and over again? I guarantee you, if anybody else wrote something as eloquent as this in regards to anybody else with limited range, fools on here would be STRAIGHT CLOWNING. Stealing new locations, bringing up a quote or two every time dude makes a new post, etc.
I bought this album today, listened to it with accompanying cold weather - today's the first day it's been "cold" per Tucson standards - as I feel this is a winterish record and I STILL hear nothing mindblowing. I hear them and I can feel them to an extent, but it doesn't seem as serious as a lot of you claim it to be. C'mon, do you guys honestly believe that these guys are STILL deep in the crack game? Personally, it takes a certain hunger for me to truly feel (and believe) somebody's struggle. Dudes jump on Jay-Z 'cause he stays on that crack shit knowing damn well how far removed he is. I think it's pretty obvious that Pharell ain't NEVER sold anything but music in his life so his attempts at covering the subject are corny as fuck. These dudes have been under Pharell for - what? - 5-6 years now? You REALLY think he'd jeopardize his investment by letting them stay in the streets? You honestly believe they ain't spend one rap-related dollar in 3 years or whatever?
Now please believe, I COMPLETELY understand the whole "artist as a voice" thing, so I can understand why their content is relevant, but shit, as classic as Curtis' "Pusherman" is, that wasn't ALL he had for the people. (I know, I know, nobody here is comparing Clipse to Curtis, just trying to make a point about topic range.) The one "remorse/paranoia" song on here is the one that most people on here don't seem to care for ("Nightmares").
And in regard to the beats, I think it's safe to say that if anybody else used these, they would be regarded as - for lack of a better term - wack. (For the record, I like the beats and I can appreciate the fact that they went against the norm ie. mainstream club shit, but I can also appreciate a good beat regardless of whose album it may be on.) Tell me some of these beats wouldn't fit perfectly on say, an MF Doom album. Shit, "Dirty Money" is straight up lo-fi Cody Chestnutt.
They're witty, yes. Wordplay is beautiful. Their descriptions are inspiring. I can tell they spent a lot of time with each line, but the bottom line is, as much as they can say say something different, they can't seem to say anything different. (Does that make sense?)
Herm
P.S. Why do these guys get a "questionable name-dropping" pass? Jay can't shoutout Sex & The City or My Chemical Romance without catching clownage, but these dudes are talking about Desperate Housewives and fucking Cheaters, not to mention Bape this, BBC that.
I also coped the Snoop CD.......Just 3 songs into it and it blows the Clipse album away.
If Kingmoist and Herm don't like it, it matters
if clipse flag wavers praise this it means nothing to me.
so far I'm not all that moved to buy it, I wish I DL'd it when it was up so I can gt a better idea.
Last new rap CD I bought was Snoop and before that it was De La's mixtape maybe I'm not the target audience (I don't have delusions of crack sales or BAPE fashion).
still wouldn't mind hearing some of the praise worthy songs mentioned though (Trill, etc)
I like Jame's review better than i like the album.
Im not really big on music that doesnt go anywhere though. I understand thats part of the aesthetic, but i still wish something else happened on some of those beats.
The wordplay is on point, and i like it better now than i did when i first heard it. But i dont think its that Jesus Christ coming back to earth to fuck shit up amazing either.
Its a hot album. Id rather listen to lil wayne though
KUFITASTIC!
While I don't think I'm half as eloquent as James was here, I would still say from experience this is on point.
I'm definitely more on yr side here than anyone boosting this as a 'best rap of the year' album or something, but what is good about his defense of the album is, well, it accurately describes the album. You could easily take all of his descriptions and flip them so they explain why yr disappointed in this record. I'm just glad that people talking about how
The Clipse = Lazy.
The Ramones are one of the best bands ever, but not because, on several tracks, they brought in a sitar player, while on others they used the London Symphony Orchestra... with lyrics addressing a wide variety of topics over, alternately, three-chord punk and avant solo cello.
I don't really see what's so hard to "get" about this album. It's very bleak, stark, and the focus is incredible (IMO, i suppose). I get lost in the details of the production and the way the whole record sounds, from open to close. I don't really want the lyrics to be different. First off, it wouldn't quite make sense in the sonic context of the record and second, it's what I expect from Clipse. If I wanted different subject matter I'd find a different artist.
I don't write as well as James, though.
A friend of mine compared this album to a really good hardcore record. Same-y but really great in spite of that.