Austinist CD Review: Clipse - Hell Hath No Fury

The tough talk is peppered with enough philosophical asides (“open up the Frigidaire/25 to life in there”) to make crack seem like a deal struck with the devil in exchange for the worldly pleasures the rap world obsesses over. On a mixtape last year, Pusha wrote vividly about the empty feeling life in the fast lane sometimes gave him: “Cruising in that drop, and still I feel/like I’m nothing more than a hamster in a wheel.” From the very first track, “We Got It For Cheap,” Pusha is conflicted, delivering the lines “To little brother Terrence, whom I love dearly so/if ever I had millions, never would you push blow/never.” We know why; by the next track, he's snarling "young'n don't make my sales rise/I'll shoot you out your chuckers" to someone else's little brother. The dramatic tension alone is thick enough to stop bullets.

Speaking of tension, the Neptunes have created some kind of frigid masterpiece here. Rap has become such a producer’s medium that a handful of A-list beatmakers typically make more money off a track than their clients, but it’s not often that one finds a truly complementary pairing of beatsmith to rhymer. But Clipse’s terrifying sang-froid finds a direct counterpoint in Pharrell and Chad Hugo’s frigid minimalism. Who’d have thought there were so many potent combinations of dope beat/weird noise/crack talk? Words can’t express the allure of single “Mr. Me Too”’s bottomless slow-burn, anchoring a post-everything beat to droning synths and deadpan female “uh-huh”s. “Dirty Money” pairs a rush of high life and cheap thrills to an appropriately strung-out track, just a shuffling beat and distorted guitar scrawl—no bass, no nothing. “Trill” is a trip to the club in hell, swirling synth-tones blocking out all sunlight while Pharrell delivers an unprintable hook about being, well y’know. On the album's sublime centerpiece, “Ride Around Shining,” a skittering harp line ascends to a dissonant high note and just hangs there, suspended over a skeletal beat and what sounds like a sample of a man getting punched in the stomach. It's the deadliest thing hip-hop has heard since, well, “Grindin’,” and profoundly disturbing even when paired with ridiculous rhymes about being “the black Martha Stewart;” for all the chutzpah on display, it's the sound of a brass ring swinging just out of reach, taunting any attempt to quell the bottomless lust for cash coke life brings.

It’s difficult to estimate what Clipse would sound like without the Neptunes—part of what makes Hell Hath No Fury such a compelling album is that it feels like an ALBUM, lean, cohesive and well-paced, rather than a collection of disparate tracks cobbled together for maximum commercial appeal (hi Snoop!). Which is not to say Fury isn't unabashedly commercial; but it's the first mainstream rap record with any sense of ambition since Ghostface’s FishScale, which despite zero airplay sold more in its first week than D4L sold altogether. Hip hop needs a reminder that stepped-on thug posing and gold-plated cellphones do not a rap star make. This could be the record to do it.