The band formed in 2009. Initially conceived as a remix project, Jonathan Snipes and William Hutson began composing new beats to accompany mainstream and gangster rap acapellas. These early attempts paired noise and power-electronics inspired tracks with existing vocals by commercial rap artists. This was done simply to amuse each other and the duo earned very few fans. clipping. began in earnest in 2010, when rapper Daveed Diggs joined the group. The three members had known each other for many years— Diggs and Hutson since elementary school, and Snipes since college. Despite this, clipping. is their first project as a trio, building on their long relationship and on their shared obsession with rap, and with music’s outer limits.
Individually, the members are known outside of the group for their extra-curricular artistic projects. Diggs is a stage actor, while Snipes composes music for film, and Hutson is an established noise music artist. Snipes and Hutson have collaborated on many projects, including the score to the documentary Room 237, which was released by IFC in 2013.
In February 2013, clipping. released their debut album, Midcity, on their website. The project was created entirely in-house, with the trio writing, producing, engineering, mixing and mastering all of the material themselves. There was no budget, no outside promotion, no hype-machine, no blog or label interest. In fact, clipping. had no expectation that anyone would bother listening to the album, let alone enjoy it. Nevertheless, reactions were largely positive— despite the uncompromising nature of the production, and its obfuscatory lyrical content— and within five month’s of Midcity’s release, clipping. signed a deal with Sub Pop Records.
CLPPNG, the band’s label debut, was written and recorded between February and October of 2013. Although clipping.’s working methods were pretty much the same as they were for Midcity (only passing off the mixing and mastering to outside professionals) CLPPNG is a much more ambitious project. The album features guest verses from some of the band’s strongest influences, including Gangsta Boo (formerly of Three 6 Mafia, and currently of Da Mafia 6ix), Guce (longtime Bay Area mainstay, member of Bullys Wit Fullys), King T (all-around West Coast gangster rap legend, founder of the Likwit Crew, and mentor to Xzibit and Tha Alkaholiks). For the first single from the album, “Work Work”, clipping. joined up with Cocc Pistol Cree, a newcomer from Compton best known for her appearance on DJ Mustard’s mixtape Ketchup, and her song ‘Lady Killa.’
In addition to the featured guests, CLPPNG boasts a more varied sonic palette than its predecessor. The new album attempts to stretch the band’s experimental sounds to fit a wider emotional range— Midcity had anger and aggression figured out, but how can clipping.’s harsh electronics fit into a club track, or a slow jam, or a song to strip to? Relying heavily on musique-concrète techniques, the trio built many of the tracks out of field recordings and acoustic sounds. The beat for “Tonight (featuring Gangsta Boo)” evokes a nasty, late night encounter with its fleshy slaps and squishy, biological noises, while “Dream” utilizes natural ambiences to create a bleary, hypnagogic mis-en-scène. But the band hasn’t gone soft, not by a long shot. The album’s intro is likely the most uncompromisingly brutal piece of music they’ve yet recorded, and “Or Die (featuring Guce)” is as mean as anything on Midcity. CLPPNG is an album that demonstrates the variety of sounds available when the ‘rules’ of a genre are willfully questioned.
