There Existed An Addiction To Blood - Clipping: Review
is a Los Angeles based hip hop trio consisting of experimental noise and jump producers William Hutson and Jonathan Snipes, as well as multi-talented MC Daveed Diggs. The group independently released a debut mixtape Midcity back in 2013 and after garnering some attention from it they were signed to sub pop records and released the massively critically acclaimed CLPPNG. Two years later the band got even more experimental on the highly conceptual Splendor & Misery and now three years later after a number of remixes, singles and EPs helped manage the gap between releases, the trio is back with a new horror and Halloween themed record released off the back of a few critically acclaimed singles.
Review By Lavender:
It's no secret I have been a massive fan of Clipping this decade, the brilliance of Daveed Diggs lyrically and the experimental genre bending instrumentals he raps over on Clipping tracks has made them one of the standout artists in experimental hip hop in the 2010's. Both their previous full length records made it into the top 20 of my albums of the year lists and tracks like All Black, Body & Blood, Block, and Work Work are on the shortlist for my songs of the decade list coming in January. This was one of my most anticipated records of the year from the moment it was announced, but the three singles including a stand out single of the year contender only did more to build my uncontrollable excitement. While Addiction may not be the best of Clipping's three records they still manage to run laps around the world of contemporary hip hop, and even a lot of their experimental contemporaries with a tightly thematic and sonically consistent record.
The record got off to an excellent start with the great lead single Nothing Is Safe. The song has a chilling beat worked around some classic horror movie plucky piano. Daveed's flows are flawlessly tight in stark contrast to the messy and fear inducing lyrical content. The songs beat drops are another brilliant moment where Diggs delivery gets harder and the song rounds out its brooding lyrical themes. The second single didn't blow me away quite as much, La Mala Ordina is an underground rap posse cut with a simple cypher like beat. The track in't perfect but Diggs drops an excellent verse and the track manages to overcome a few so-so features to still be a decent track within the album.
The single that may be one of Clippings best to date and the one that has a good chance of landing high on my singles of the year list is the brilliant Blood Of The Fang. The song has some absolutely cutthroat flows that see Diggs consistently switching up the speed and cadence of his flows perfectly. The track not only interpolates the horror themes and imagery of the rest of the album in its lyrics but also contains some biting and relevant political commentary weaving together one of the best lyrical moments the album has to offer, that also happens to come on one of the best tunes.
This record is very conceptual and has a number of interludes that serve up spoken word passages or sometimes just sheer grating noise to add to the full listening experience. But the record also contains a handful of absolutely incredible moments I'm super excited to talk about, starting with The Show. The track contains what is probably the best flow I've heard Daveed give since CLPPNG and he does it over a beat that mostly serves as background for him to knock down one killer bar after another for one of the best performances you'll hear in a rap song this year.
Story 7 is the lyrical highlight of the record and fittingly it tells an absolutely excellent story delivered with some rapid fire flows. The best isn't one of the track best moments but everything comes together for the stories bloody climax in the second half and puts a lot of the songs momentum to really good use. He Dead has a quiet distant but constantly rumbling beat and opens up with an Ed Balloon feature where he seems to re-introduce some of the records themes before the beat kicks off and Daveed takes over. Diggs is absolutely fantastic over the insane beat as he skillfully flies from one flow to another on an excellent display of technical skills.
This record has a very consistent sound and while the instrumentals never get repetitive occasionally the lyrics and flows do, or sometimes when they introduce new elements they don't go over quite perfectly. All In Your Head is not a song I loved at first but it grew on me with consecutive listens. The best gets so much better once Daveed starts his second verse but the best selling point of the track is the contrast between Daveed's cold and monotone yet intimate performance, and the abstracted but explosive Robyn Hood feature that sees her prophesying some feminist mantras for an excellent dichotomy. Club Down has a quiet but very busy instrumental featuring some slammed keys and an explosive slowly evolving beat that makes form some very driving verses. The one part of the track I really don't like is Daveed's sung chorus, it drags on and on and is the only point on the record that I think the vocals just don't sound good. Aside from the repetition of the title refrain I want to avoid the rest of the chorus here which is a shame because the song is great otherwise.
There are very rarely any songs that I just flat out don't like on a Clipping record, Addiction does have a pair of tracks however that I are just not interesting enough for their own good. Run For Your Life re-treads a lot of ground that is all over the rest of the record but it just doesn't do enough to separate itself. Maybe in isolation the song could have sounded a little bit more impressive but everything it does is done better at other places on the album. Finally there's Attunement a track I don't love, I was expecting it to grow on me at first but ultimately I think the incredibly slow pace of the track mixed with the stripped back beat makes it a little bit of a slog.
There is one special thing I want to talk about and it is the last 18 minutes of this album, a track called Piano Burning. I am not afraid to call out when I think something is fake woke, or pointlessly trying to be conceptual while not really saying or doing anything, which is what I've seen a lot of people attributing to this track. But there are actually a few things I really like about this song and theorizing about some of the reasons it was included has been a lot of fun in the days since the record came out. The 18 minutes of sound encapsulates just what the title says, a piano slowly burning and compared to the explosive 45 minutes that preceded it the song is an amazing moment to breathe and collect yourself, but knowing that any moment the whole thing could come crashing down makes the relief temporary. It is so fittingly Clipping to me that they would manage to end a record with a song that is both disorganized but focused, quiet but on edge and distant but captivating.
There Existed An Addiction To Blood has moments that are as creative as ever from one of the most creative acts in all of modern rap music, while it may not execute quite as consistently as some of their other records or some of the best works of their contemporaries the highlights here are as brilliant as ever. There is no reason to expect that Clipping won't make more fantastic music going forward and the horror themes that pop up across this album should make it an October staple for years to come. 8/10
For more experimental hip hop check out my review of Danny Brown's uknowhatimsayin here
