Artist: Clipse
Album: Til The Casket Drops
Year: 2009
Grade: 2 pretzels
It’s been three years since Clipse’s last album, the impressive and complex Hell Hath No Fury. The appeal of that album came from the winning combination of beats provided by the Neptunes and the intricate lyrical interplay between brothers Malice and Pusha T. It was also a downright creepy album, full of sinister keyboards and songs that skirted around the immorality of drug dealing and crime. Glorifying criminal activities through good music and witty rhyming is, of course, nothing new, but Clipse managed to reinvent that specific wheel in a very good way, bringing the danger back into gangster rap. Now, in 2009, the same Clipse/Neptunes team has released Til The Casket Drops, a album Clipse themselves refer to as “long overdue” in the very first song. However, Til The Casket Drops is barely even a shadow of the great album that preceded it.
Rap has a very complicated relationship with becoming successful. The vast majority of rap debuts focus on the struggles of life, while dreaming of a day when music will bring success and wealth into the rappers’ lives. However, for those lucky enough to actually make it, success can end up destroying most of what made their music interesting in the first place. Clipse have become as much of victim of this as anyone else. Til The Casket Drops is a collection of exceedingly awkward songs, riffing on the clichéd themes of massive wealth, drug use and adoring-but-manipulative women.
The album’s overall mission statement (and second single) is “I’m Good”, a lightweight ode to money, cars and bitches. Pharrell drops by during the chorus to add some backing vocals, but the whole thing just lacks any real weight. From its insanely obvious title, “I’m Good” is just an annoying slice of lazy narcissism. Even stranger is “Footsteps”, on which Clipse taunt other rappers who they think have been ripping them off (“I’ve been the inspiration for all you industry dick-tasters”). The problem with this argument is that, while Hell Hath No Fury was a critical favorite back in 2006, Clipse haven’t exactly broken into the mainstream yet. If anything, with Til The Casket Drops, they’ve put themselves solidly in the “followers” camp rather than the “leaders.”
The rest of the songs on the album deal with expected themes of evil, sexy women (“All Eyes On Me”, “Counseling”) and drugs (“Door Man”, “There Was A Murder”). There’s just nothing new here. Worst of all, Malice and Pusha T mostly just come across as foolishly arrogant. On “Kinda Like A Big Deal”, the lyric “it’s a blessing to blow a hundred thou in a recession” just sounds horribly callous. Even stranger than the lyrics are the beats providing the usually reliable Neptunes. Pharrell and Co. have cooked up far too many half-baked, unmemorable synth jams for Til The Casket Drops, with virtually no catchy hooks or earworms in sight (with the exception of the descending piano line on “Popular Demand”). Clipse and the Neptunes had the world in their hand after Hell Hath No Fury, but with this new album, they’ve taken way too many steps back. We waited three years for…this?
Rap has a very complicated relationship with becoming successful. The vast majority of rap debuts focus on the struggles of life, while dreaming of a day when music will bring success and wealth into the rappers’ lives. However, for those lucky enough to actually make it, success can end up destroying most of what made their music interesting in the first place. Clipse have become as much of victim of this as anyone else. Til The Casket Drops is a collection of exceedingly awkward songs, riffing on the clichéd themes of massive wealth, drug use and adoring-but-manipulative women.
The album’s overall mission statement (and second single) is “I’m Good”, a lightweight ode to money, cars and bitches. Pharrell drops by during the chorus to add some backing vocals, but the whole thing just lacks any real weight. From its insanely obvious title, “I’m Good” is just an annoying slice of lazy narcissism. Even stranger is “Footsteps”, on which Clipse taunt other rappers who they think have been ripping them off (“I’ve been the inspiration for all you industry dick-tasters”). The problem with this argument is that, while Hell Hath No Fury was a critical favorite back in 2006, Clipse haven’t exactly broken into the mainstream yet. If anything, with Til The Casket Drops, they’ve put themselves solidly in the “followers” camp rather than the “leaders.”
The rest of the songs on the album deal with expected themes of evil, sexy women (“All Eyes On Me”, “Counseling”) and drugs (“Door Man”, “There Was A Murder”). There’s just nothing new here. Worst of all, Malice and Pusha T mostly just come across as foolishly arrogant. On “Kinda Like A Big Deal”, the lyric “it’s a blessing to blow a hundred thou in a recession” just sounds horribly callous. Even stranger than the lyrics are the beats providing the usually reliable Neptunes. Pharrell and Co. have cooked up far too many half-baked, unmemorable synth jams for Til The Casket Drops, with virtually no catchy hooks or earworms in sight (with the exception of the descending piano line on “Popular Demand”). Clipse and the Neptunes had the world in their hand after Hell Hath No Fury, but with this new album, they’ve taken way too many steps back. We waited three years for…this?
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