Time magazine recently declared that we're about to finish up the "decade from hell," and it really does feel like people are more desperate than usual to flip the calendar and start something clean. In spite of the success they've achieved in the 2000s, count Clipse amongst that group looking to put the past 10 years behind them: After their manager got arrested for a role in an eight-figure drug ring, some of coke-rap's leading voices were put in the unusual position of having to deny they were coke dealers. While their mid-decade output was in large part defined by a combative relationship with Jive, they're now on Columbia after an ardent courtship. Hell, they don't even seem all that interested in dissing Lil Wayne anymore.
With all that out of the way, when Clipse called themselves the Black Cards, it was because they were guaranteed to raise the bar for hip-hop with every verse. The Road To Till the Casket Drops mixtape actually showcased their punchlines more than their Play Cloths line. They quote Masta Ace. Albums still really matter to them. This is music by rap nerds for rap nerds. Which isn't a bad thing at all! Though Hell Hath No Fury was seen as something of a commercial brick back in 2006, three years later, their model is one that most rap groups would love to emulate. It galvanized a sustainable fanbase and opened up opportunities to precede Devendra Banhart on a Coachella stage (they ended up skipping it). And they may or may not have exchanged high-fives with Passion Pit at the 2009 mtvU Woodie Awards. So it's understandable if Clipse no longer feel like they have to actually prove shit to anyone, but perhaps that's why Til the Casket Drops awkwardly vacillates between confidence and complacency, between sneering at perceived competition and smarting at perceived and possibly self-made slights.
Prior leaks "Popular Demand (Popeyes)" and "Kinda Like a Big Deal" feature sensible collaborations with Cam'ron and Kanye West, but might've done more to earn their titles back in, say, 2005-- on the former, a Yuri Gagarin reference is about the only thing that can jar you from Cam's sleepwalking verse, while Kanye does his "Barry Bonds" thing, completely stealing the show with the kind of class clown spitballing we've rarely heard from him since The College Dropout. Tellingly, an attempt to contemporize falls flat on "Showing Out": I know Clipse had a thing for T.I.'s "Swing Ya Rag" (it appeared on the Road To Til the Casket Drops mixtape), but trying to get Pharrell to duplicate its busy clatter without clearance issues grates, not to mention of their worst verses ever (the Lady Gaga one), and Yo Gotti spitting generic "go hard, lil' daddy" hustle raps that go nowhere.
Not only does Til the Casket Drops refuse to settle into a groove, but you know right from opener "Freedom" that this is a very different kind of record from Clipse. The first track on a Clipse LP without production by the Neptunes (former Bad Boy associates and American Gangster curators Sean C & LV did it instead), "Freedom"'s rock star geetar and live drums are a jarring shift from the desiccated, merciless clangor of Hell Hath No Fury. But the schizo production actually fits the uneven topicality as well as the truly dangerous sonics of Hell Hath No Fury fit Clipse's anger. While that album's relatively celebratory tracks ("Dirty Money", "Ride Around Shinin") only amplified the amorality and emptiness that surrounded them, "Door Man", "Never Will It Stop", and "Popular Demand (Popeyes)" defiantly wave knots of hundreds.
Clipse are far weaker at creating what they might term "lifestyle music," which comprises most of Casket's side B. The mesmerizingly awful "I'm Good" is pure Velveeta, and the guys hardly bother to dignify this garishly fluorescent cheese with even a decent punchline. And the problem with the Keri Hilson feature "All Eyes on Me" and "Counseling" isn't the mere fact that they could pass for late-90s rap'n'b; it's that they could be late-90s softbatch rap'n'b from anyone-- Clipse are strangely anonymous in these contexts.
There's no doubt that Clipse are an unusually introspective and self-aware group, but particularly since We Got It 4 Cheap, Vol. 3, you get the feeling they've been reading too much of their own press, however positive it's been. They know that some of their own fans have pigeonholed them as strictly criminologists ("Mistook my work for solely crack/ You should've got more out of it than that") or martyrs in label warfare. (Pusha T describes the "self-made prison" of the music business in "Freedom" and ends his verse saying, "my critics finally have a verse of mine to jerk off to.") On the reflective "Footsteps", Malice confides that an associate's prison sentence "weighs on my conscience, and I hate conscious rap." Earlier, Pusha calls himself "Common on his 'D-Boy," and promising the truth "no matter how bland it is."
As fascinating as this self-reckoning can be, it ultimately expresses why Til the Casket Drops is so uneven: It's Clipse questioning their perceived current fans (backpackers who got into "Grindin'") while trying to make amends with those they perceive to have lost (girls who got into "Ma, I Don't Love Her"). They've made a career out of conflict, but I just hope they're not missing the middle ("When the Last Time", "Virginia") because they think it's a comfort zone.
