Rap music is not my area of expertise (I have expressed as much before); however, I know what I like. As much as I like the “gangsta” leanings of Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg back in the day and some of the poppier stuff of the UMCs and DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince back in the day, I have always been more drawn by those rap artists/groups that spoke “at a higher level”, meaning they spoke not only of drugs, violence, women, and goofing off but also had a social message or something greater. I love A Tribe Called Quest and the message they had in their rhymes, and they enjoyed some success in the mid-1990s before creative differences fractured the band. Gang Starr was a fantastic group that didn’t get nearly the love it deserved, and now poor Guru has passed and the group is done. Finding artists and groups that possess these traits of social consciousness and “rising above” those things which bring them down seem hard to find for me, probably because I basically unplugged several years ago.
Enter Clipse. Clipse is an interesting rap duo out of Norfolk, Virginia, which is an area that is typically a hotbed for professional sports talent as well as musical talents. Clipse received their break from friend Pharrell Williams, who has been involved not only in rapping with the Neptunes but also in producing records. Clipse has never really gained commercial success as they were never really promoted by their labels when their albums were released. However, they have received a fair bit of critical success for their lyrics and ability to bend words and themes at will. Hell Hath No Fury, their second official album, was released in 2006 and was well received critically. It is the subject of this entry.
#42 – Clipse, Hell Hath No Fury (Metascore = 89)
Clipse released Hell Hath No Fury in response to their troubled relationship with their record label, Jive Records. They were originally on Arista Records and had written a number of songs that matched the positive energy of their first release. However, in the middle of working on the album Arista dissolved and was bought out by Jive, and the group (brothers Gene “Malice” and Terrence “Pusha T” Thornton) could not withdraw from Jive due to contractual issues even though their friends and roster mates with Jive were sent over to Interscope Records. Jive delayed the album in favor of pop-oriented acts.
In no place is this more apparent than in “We Got It for Cheap”, where Pusha T raps “no serum can cure all the pain I’ve endured/from crack to rap to back to sellin’ it pure/for every record I potentially sell in the store/it’s like Mecca to the dealer that’s sellin’ it raw/so many deceive ya”. While on the surface he speaks of escaping the dark life he had been living, veiled underneath are the stabs at the label that would never work with them. The beats in “We Got It for Cheap” are also fantastic, feeding Pusha T and Malice to lyrical heights. In “Mr. Me Too” Pharrell, Pusha T, and Malice slap the artists that are copycats, copying rap styles, copying fashion styles, whatever.
While the message element for me isn’t always there, what I do like is the mix of incredible beats (“Ride Around Shining” has a killer beat) with quick-wit lyrics without being over-the-top fast or ludicrously slow. Pusha T and Malice cover a lot of ground here, from bashing their record label to criticizing “phony rappers” (to reference Tribe) to flinging their bling, and they do it with excellent skill. I understand every word they say, and their references provide an excellent visual to what they are talking about.
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