A rusty gate greets you with rust that looks like it’s been growing for 200 years. You can feel the leaves cracking below your feet as you take in the view of the tree laden hillside. The outline of a decrepit cabin starts to come into view, so you start to wander towards it before heading out for some afternoon activities. After having fun for the afternoon, you come back into the cabin to fall asleep. All the sudden, it’s over, you’re dead. A fire encapsulates the cabin and right before you’re burned alive you see the soot falling, the same color as the rust on the gate. You didn’t notice the coven eyeing you from the bushes, waiting for the right moment to strike and end your life for their pure enjoyment.
These are the type of horror stories that Daveed paints on the new clipping album, Visions of Bodies Being Burned. The song in question is “She Bad”, a minimalistic hip hop track about murderous witches. Jonathan Snipes and William Hutson’s production rounds out the trio and always adds a lot to the world that Daveed is weaving. In this case, there’s even a creaking sound in the background that is supposed to represent the rusty gate moving back and forth.
This is what makes clipping special, the way they tell a story. Instead of just telling a character arc, they build worlds with their songs. Part of this is because of the rules that they give themselves, which is that Daveed never raps in first person. This leads to a lot of description about the world itself instead of about the characters in the story. Jonathan and William create these menacing soundscapes that accompany the story perfectly. The song above is a perfect example, as the rust door is only one part of the ambient, but detailed production Daveed delivers this horror over.
Another great example of this is “‘96 Neve Campbell” with Cam and China, as well as the preceding interlude. Cam and China are representing the “final girl” characters in the horror movies that survive the killer. But in this song, they don’t just survive the killer, but attack him first. The interlude sets up the scene, with two girls playing with a Ouija board that spells out “He is here”, which then is immediately followed by the sound of a door being banged on and Daveed starting off the song with some scene description, setting up Cam and China’s aggressive versus perfectly. That banging on the door transition between songs is so perfect that it has me looking over my shoulder more times than not, even though I know it’s coming every time. It’s a surreal moment that is similar to “Run For Your Life” on the sister album that they released last year, There Existed an Addiction to Blood. That song features Daveed rapping about being chased by a serial killer while taking a nighttime stroll, and the only time an actual beat comes in is when a car passes by. The way that they somehow pull this off and not have it seem forced is one of the most impressive musical moments I’ve heard in a long time.
There are many extremely impressive musical moments on this project as well. “Pain Everyday” with Michael Esposito is the best example of this. The song is about the ghosts of lynch victims getting revenge on their murders and their descendents by haunting them until they kill themselves. If that’s not eerie enough, the song features real recordings of what are said to be restless spirits. As great as that part is, it’s the production and percussion specifically that makes this song special. Besides the song being in 7/8, the percussion gets ever erratic as the song goes along before the last 50 seconds are pure insanity with the percussion moving disorientingly around the soundscape while these extremely elongated strings that keep this feeling of peace in all this chaos. I have absolutely no idea how one even manages to create music like this, but I’m so glad that it exists.
They still manage to bring a good amount of bangers on this project too. The aforementioned “‘96 Neve and Campbell” is a great example, but “Looking for Meat” with Ho99o9 is the best banger on the project. Everything about the production is blown out to the biggest extent, which helps give this song the crazed energy that the rappers show in their lyrics. Compared to many songs on the album, this one is fairly straightforward with its meaning, cannibalism. Daveed and Ho99o9 use extremely animalistic language in their verses to illustrate the mentality of this person, “Looking like a snack, no cap, no flattery. But you like to beat it up and come, no battery. So free range meat, guess it’ll have to be. Roast on a spit, pole through the oral cavity.”
“Check the Lock” exemplifies someone in an extreme state of paranoia and anxiety. It shows how the anxiety of a drug dealer ends up driving him mad. His paranoia that someone will find him is so strong that he never parks in front of his house, keeps his finger on a trigger at almost every time possible, takes his own drugs to help quell the feeling, and makes sure to sleep with his shoes on so he’s ready to run. But even though this song is extremely detailed in its lyrics, the production and hook are catchy enough that this could be played around almost everyone and they wouldn’t realize the true horrors this song talks about.
Clipping perfected the horror album for the second year in a row. I haven’t heard anything in hip hop that gives off a similar feeling as Visions of Bodies Being Burned and There Existed an Addiction to Blood. There are even plenty of hair raising moments on this album that I haven’t mentioned yet, like the choral arrangements on “Make Them Dead”, or the noise outro on “Body for the Pile” that shows once again the threatening horror soundscapes that clipping can create. This album is the music equivalent of a blockbuster horror movie, created with the goal of making the listener uncomfortable and paranoid at every moment, waiting to see what beasts will be around the corner.
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