Schnipper’s Slept On
- story THE FADER
Each Tuesday, FADER editor Matthew Schnipper highlights an underappreciated recent release he thinks we need to know about. This week it’s Clipse’s “Pussy” 12-inch. Listen to “Pussy” here, buy it here and read about it after the jump.
Most days I go to Whole Foods, buy food and a sweet tea, and go eat in Madison Square Park. I was doing this yesterday when Malice from Clipse was walking around the park and his publicist brought him over to say hi. He didn’t really want to talk and neither did I. It was hot, I wasn’t wearing socks, he was wearing a lot of black. He asked me what I was eating and I was like “tomato salad.” Then he stood there and I sat there and then he was like “bye” and I was like “bye.” I did not tell him about the second time I saw Clipse play, sitting on the steps at Columbia University. Vampire Weekend opened. My dad went to Columbia. I wanted to go but did not apply because I didn’t think I would get in with low As and high Bs and 1270 SAT score (700 English). Vampire Weekend said from the stage that you should pay attention to Clipse’s wordplay. “Copperfield flow, yes.” Yep.
“Pussy” was on the Barbershop 2: Back in Business soundtrack. It was the first song they played the first time I saw them. It sounds like NASA hammers and lots of sardine cans getting opened. In FADER 36, Chris Ryan wrote a story about Clipse where the third and fourth words are “sighs Malice.” Bummer, right? Dude was tired and over it. But it’s a life. I wrote about Clipse on the Turntable Lab blog when I used to do that. I said:
I haven’t written anything because all I talk about now is yoga. This isn’t about yoga: put this song on and listen all the way through. Then go to the two minute/thirty-three second mark where Malice finishes the chorus with a slack “Miami Vice…” Because it’s the way the song started it has the effect of a round and you expect to hear the chorus repeat. Instead, Pusha comes in hard half a beat before you think they’ll start up again and says ‘Sorry heavenly father…’ and it gives you that little impish energy jolt, like after a low dip in yoga but rap; he did it, you did it, and there’s just a lot of unexpected success.
That’s embarrassing.
I was just eating my lunch, he was on his way to an interview, both doing our jobs. But his job involves both living and saying things like “Mercy, mercy, oh lord who is he who is he who curse me curse for doing me?/ It hurts me so, puts me though changes, so I’ve got Porsches and Hummers to deal with the anguish,” which is a serious amount of coping. I’ve been reading about the economy lately trying to understand, and it seems much of the route of things is people buying stuff they don’t have money for. I just got a credit card so I could build credit because I have none. I pay it in full every month. Why would you buy things you cannot afford? But if the lord is inflicting such great anguish on you that it seems necessary, who am I to talk? But, fundamentally, person-to-person, I don’t understand that.
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