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LOS ANGELES trio clipping. are the latest anomalous group recording for that unlikely incubator of outsider hip-hop, Sub Pop. As home to intergalactic explorers Shabazz Palaces, South African "Township Tech" artist Spoek Mathambo, and the now-defunct astral soul sisters THEESatisfaction, the Seattle label best known as grunge champions in the 1990s and for nuanced indie rock in the 2000s has also nurtured adventurous rap artists during the past decade. To date, Sub Pop has released two clipping. albums, providing a substantial platform for music that colors way outside the lines of modern hiphop.
On 2016's Splendor & Misery and 2014's CLPPNG, producers Jonathan Snipes and William Hutson fuse rugged, abstract beats with the sort of sculpted noise and bizarre percussion timbres that sound more like the domain of avant-garde alienators than of RZA and J Dilla disciples or Metro Boomin. MC Daveed Diggs—who's won Grammy and Tony Awards for his work in the popular musical Hamilton—spits verses that encompass turbulent street life and robust, youngblood horniness, although bolstered by an undercurrent of existentialism. Post-gangsta anecdotes told at a PhD level, in a sense.
