Clipse | Hell Hath No Fury (Re-up Gang Records/Star Trak/Jive)
Clipse | Hell Hath No Fury
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
The first single, “Mr. Me Too,” is terse and tense. Producers the Neptunes retool half the beat from “Drop It Like It’s Hot,” slow it to a somnambulant tempo, and pit it against an ominous tone burst that fades away like an exhalation. The Neptunes’ steez is notoriously minimalist–their tracks make Gucci Crew songs sound like Phil Spector by comparison–and with Clipse, their collaborators since high school, they push it even further. Song beds are frequently limited to just two elements, an antsy beat antagonized by an unsettling minor-key sample: Indian flute, didgeridoo, a single decaying synth note, a sour squeeze of accordion. Beats drop out for too long or verses get stripped to the kick, leaving you in suspense, hanging on a rhyme like “Break down pies to pieces / Make cocaine quiches” (“Ride Around Shinin’”).
JARVIS COCKER | Jarvis
Dalton has become yet another cause celebre of the freak-folk scene–Devendra Banhart is a huge fan and contributed a muddled essay to the liner notes–but her art is too big to settle comfortably into a single subculture. Like Dylan before her, she made sense of the whole sprawling territory of American popular music–rock, folk, jazz, country, blues, cabaret, and whatever else she could wrap her voice around. –Peter Margasak
