Do you like scary movies? clipping. likes them so much that while recording 2019’s There Existed an Addiction to Blood, the group amassed enough songs to fill a second album. Built from the same blueprint of bristly noise and gory horrorcore rap, Visions of Bodies Being Burned continues where its predecessor left off, again indulging the trio’s love of horror. The sequel suffers from the same dryness as its predecessor, but clipping.’s collages remain richly textured and packed with slick allusions to film, rap, and politics.
The album’s title is lifted from “Mind Playing Tricks on Me,” expanding Scarface’s anguished recap of a nightmare—“candlesticks in the dark, visions of bodies being burned”—into a cinematic universe of horrors. Single “Say the Name” uses the line as the centerpiece for a house ode to Candyman, rapper Daveed Diggs’ voice screwing into a demonic growl as dark synths strobe in the background. “’96 Neve Campbell” reimagines the Scream star as a slasher’s worst nightmare, guests Cam & China the foils to Billy and Stu. clipping. digs through the rap and horror archives with unrestrained delight.
Diggs is especially giddy. “Say the Name” nods to “What Da Hook Gon Be,” “Shimmy Shimmy Ya,” and “Still Not a Player,” songs only a fan could link. “Check the Lock” nods to “Sleepin’ in My Nikes” by late Oakland rapper Seagram; the apocalyptica of “Something Underneath” channels sci-fi author N.K. Jemisin’s The Fifth Season and shouts out OutKast’s “Hey Ya.” Diggs isn’t as enamored with his influences as, say, JPEGMAFIA, but he’s clearly having fun.
The album falters when these hints of personality get snuffed out. Though Diggs is an animated performer, he isn’t a strong orator; his verses lose color when he raps in triple-time, which is his go-to mode when producers Jonathan Snipes and William Hutson dial up the intensity. That detachment is intentional, of course. One of clipping.’s foundational rules is the avoidance of first-person perspectives, a restriction they believe frees them from authenticity. “Our beats are more aggressive and scarier than Daveed’s actual personality,” Hutson has said. “And the way that the band works, we couldn’t have him pretending to be someone he’s not.” Sure. But third-person perspectives are not inherently impersonal and distant. DOOM’s whole career is rapped in third-person. Open Mike Eagle has rapped from the perspective of a building and community. Aesop Rock has used a dog and a gopher as muses.
clipping.’s self-erasure rubs up against the self-indulgence of their project. Though there’s plenty of stagecraft to their compositions—the echoing jungle breaks and EFX on “Pain Everyday”; the scratchy percussion and whispers of harp on “Eaten Alive”; the “200 years of rust” on a witch’s gate on “She Bad”—no matter how much detail Diggs, Hutson, Snipes pour into their elaborate hellscapes, their frights feel vacant. There’s plenty of mood to clipping.’s horrorcore, but no theater, no ham, no cheese.
Acts like Geto Boys, Gravediggaz, Three 6 Mafia, Kool Keith, and Eminem paired the occult with sex jokes, action sequences, and boasts. Visions of Bodies Being Burned, like There Existed an Addiction to Blood, is a clear homage to the horrorcore canon, so it’s necessarily a pastiche. But it’s disappointing how academic the record’s sense of terror is. Horrorcore isn’t some ancestral custom lost to history. It flows through the bully raps of 21 Savage and ShooterGang Kony; the crime sagas of Maxo Kream; the cartoonish villainy of Sada Baby; Ronny J’s caustic low-ends. clipping. never present themselves as resurrectors of horrorcore, and Visions’ songs are livelier than those on TEEATB, but the way the group embraces the style feels archaeological. Put differently: What would Vision of Bodies Being Burned sound like if clipping. made scary movies rather than just liked them?
Buy: Rough Trade
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