Most albums start out with a vision. It probably won’t be obvious to the artist making it until after a few studio sessions, and it won’t be obvious to the listener for a couple songs either. But it’s right there, clear. Sometimes that vision is nothing more to string together a few instrumentals and rap your ass off for forty minutes, and it can be strikingly successful (see mid-2000s-Lil Wayne), and sometimes that vision is to construct a powerful image and story, which Rick Ross masterfully did with 2010’s Teflon Don. Clipse’s seminal 2006 coke-rap album Hell Hath No Fury does the latter to perfection. It’s twelve short tracks of flawless rapping and lyricism, backed by phenomenal frantic Neptunes production, and it remains one of the single best hip-hop albums to emerge in the 21st century.
Clipse is made up of two brothers, Pusha T and Malice. After the Clipse duo split unofficially in 2010, the former signed to Kanye West’s GOOD Music to a small amount of success, while the latter found religion and changed his name to No Malice: as Pusha put it on “Blow,” “Malice found religion, Tony found prison, I’m just tryna find my way out of this fucking kitchen.” The two brothers have remarkably similar rapping voices (Malice’s voice might be slightly higher pitched), but that similarity isn’t quite reflected in their subject matter: Pusha has always been the darker one, while Malice takes more to reflection. What is comparable, though, is their skill. Both brothers are remarkably good rappers, and arguably two of the more underrated in the genre during their time of operation. Neither often try to demonstrate their skill through double-time flows, but they’re certainly capable of sharp delivery, like when Pusha raps “I philosophize about Glocks and ki’s, niggas call me young black Socrates, West Indies” on “Momma I’m So Sorry.”
Both Pusha and Malice are deliberate in their pacing – not slow, but certainly not fast. They’re technically sound (although missteps are more difficult when one stays away from anything groundbreaking), but their deft phrasing and rhyming is top class. Clipse’s apparent aversion to the letter ‘r’ when it’s preceded by a vowel allows them to mow through rhyme after rhyme without too many problems. Just after Malice executed a similar achievement on the last verse of “Mr. Me Too,” Pusha rhymes the exact same sound for the first sixteen bar verse of “Wamp Wamp (What It Do)” without compromising any of his trademark snappy lyricism (shit, he namedrops Bathing Ape, Ice Cream, Billionaire Boy Club, and Betty Crocker).
I found poetry, excuse me, Floetry. “Say yes!” Niggas hear the “Eghck!” and they know it’s me. Pusha T
And that lyricism is what makes Clipse’s music so powerful. Neither member of the Clipse spends much time trying to show off their skill with multi-syllabic rhymes or the like. However, in no way does that discredit the duo in terms of lyricism. Their depiction of dealing cocaine is as vivid as it gets in hip-hop, backed by constant references to fashion brands, expensive alcohol, and South Beach. Their subject matter could hardly be called vast, but the two stretch their topic of choice to its limits. But beyond their skill for painting pictures through words, the two are also extremely clever. In the second verse of “Keys Open Doors,” Malice uses a two bar sequence (“Keys in the floor, mistress in Dior, bitch tell me she love me but I know she’s a whore, shit could get ugly, shit she talk to the Law, and that’s just what I get, it’s the Roses of War”) to make a very intelligent double entendre regarding The War of the Roses. Both Pusha and Malice (particularly the former) are skilled with faster paced rapping (Pusha rhymes chameleon, million, Bolivian, oblivion, Brazilian, reptilian, and Gilligan in the two closing bars of “Trill”), but the more significant testament to their ability is the fact that they don’t have to resort to traditional show-off techniques to demonstrate their skill. Even when they hit mellower songs like album closer “Nightmares” with Bilal, they hardly falter.
Clipse thrives on atmosphere, but their skilled lyricism is only part of the equation. The Neptunes, another iconic hip-hop duo, is at the top of their game throughout Hell Hath No Fury. Their synths are chaotic, their basslines buzzing, their drums placed seemingly at random – but the result is phenomenal. Few rappers could match the unbelievable chaos that The Neptunes weaves across Hell Hath No Fury, but Pusha T and Malice certainly can. The rumbling synth arpeggio and various drum sounds that The Neptunes used to craft “Trill” or the synth riffs across “Chinese New Year” are uniquely Neptunes-esque and uniquely brilliant. It’s a powerfully distinctive sound.
Flawless is a subjective term, but if it exists in the world of hip-hop, Hell Hath No Fury can’t be too far off it. It’s certainly not the same thing as great: My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy has several glaring flaws, but it was arguably the best album of the year (and maybe even in a broader time period). No, the term ‘flawless’ refers to an artist’s vision, and how well said artist executed said vision. Clipse’s goal with this album is abundantly clear – to paint a picture of the drug dealing life – and it was virtually perfect. It’s lyrically excellent and produced to perfection. True greatness isn’t easy to achieve with a topic as narrow and with ambitions as low as Clipse had in Hell Hath No Fury. But with artistic vision in mind, few albums in hip-hop approaches this album, the greatest coke-rap album and one of The Neptunes and Clipse’s best.