"Grindin’"— The Clipse

If you had to pick just one album to define the 21st century so far, what would it be? I'm Cole Kyshna from Disect. And I'm Charles Holmes from The Midnight Boys and on Tuesday, July 29th, Colin Iron watching season 4 of Last Song Standing, but this year we're mixing things up. Instead of searching for an artist's greatest song, we're asking an even bigger question. What is the greatest album of the 21st century so far? Listen to Last Song Standing on the Disect Podcast Feed or the Disect YouTube channel starting Tuesday, July 29th. A reading from the Book of Psalms, English Standard Version, Psalm 29, not all of it, but most of it. The Lord breaks the cedars of Lebanon. He makes Lebanon to skip like a calf and Syrian, that's a mountain, like a young wild ox. The voice of the Lord flashes forth flames of fire. The voice of the Lord shakes the wilderness. The Lord shakes the wilderness of Kadesh. The voice of the Lord makes the deer give birth and strips the forest's bear. And in his temple all cry, glory. Is it wrong of me? Is it sacrilegious of me? If sometimes I still think of his voice as the voice of God. He is Louisville. Seth knew now why. For the children of Israel was supposed to multiply. Randy Newman, God song. God song parentheses. That's why I love mankind. Close parentheses. It's the pronunciation of supposed to, there. The way Randy Newman sings supposed to as supposed to, supposed to multiply. That's what really strips the forest bear and makes the deer give birth in my opinion. I must in it of the children and done. So as the Lord and the Lord said. And in the temple of rock critics who vote in year end polls all cry. Glory. Randy Newman first put out God song in 1972. On his exalted 1972 album, Sail Away. I first got heavy into him though via 2003 record of his called The Randy Newman Songbook Volume One where he does a bunch of his old hits solo, including this one. Now, if you know Randy Newman's soul is the toy story guy, then maybe you think the Lord's about to say nice, encouraging, comforting things about mankind on this song, God song parentheses. That's why I love mankind. Close parentheses. But if you know literally anything else about Randy Newman, if you know for example what sort of ship is sailing away on the album on the song, Sail Away. If you know any second thing about that you've got a friend in me guy, then you know enough to know that in Randy's opinion, you ain't got a friend in the Lord, per se. Man means nothing. He means less to me. The lolliest cactus flower. The humbless yucketry. To me there are voices that just naturally convey absolute authority, voices that radiate a musical but also moral and legitimately spiritual authority. And Randy Newman's got one of those voices. Even if he does not have a stereotypically booming, powerful, rushing of many waters type voice. Randy's voice may not be able to break the cedars of Lebanon, but he ain't got no problem breaking mankind's balls. Okay, the Lord's about to get super mean with regards to his opinion of mankind. So let's tap in another famous beloved authoritative singer who can soften the blow or dramatically painfully intensify the blow. One of those, let's get edit James in here to shake the wilderness of Kadesh. Shall we? Yikes. Yikes. I recoil in horror from the fountess of the says the Lord to us, to mankind through the flame throwing and mountain leveling medium of edit James covering God's song in 1973, the ecstasy with which edit James sings the words squalor and filth and misery, the graceful malevolence with which edit James sings. That's why I love mankind. This song is nasty in both the non-genit Jackson sense and the Janet Jackson sense of the word nasty when edit James sings it. His vocal nastiness combines, lethally with Randy's lyrical and philosophical nastiness. Randy Newman likes to tell the story about what his father thought of the idea of God is an all-powerful caring benevolent deity. Randy says that when he was a kid, he and his dad were visiting someone in the hospital and they walked through the children's ward, right? And Randy's dad starts pointing at children in hospital beds and going, that's God's will over there and that's God's will over there and that's God's will over there. That is hilariously grim and it explains a whole hell of a lot about Randy Newman, specifically why Randy Newman would write a song where God says, I take from you your children and you say how blessed are we? So yeah, now Randy writes and sings about a God who laughs at us and Edda twists the knife by actually laughing. But for all the nastiness, for all the squalor and filth and misery, the most important line in God's song, regardless of who's singing it, is still the first line. Let's see if Edda sings, Sposeda. No, she doesn't. That's too bad. I bet Edda James could have sung the Bajezas out of the word, Sposeda, Cain Slu Able. You hear about this? Are you up on Cain and Able and Seth? The first three sons of Adam and Eve, Cain and Able both gave offerings to the Lord but the Lord liked Able's offering better and Cain got pissed. I'm paraphrasing. Let's not paraphrase a reading from the book of Genesis, English standard version, chapter four, parts of it. So Cain became very angry and his face was gloomy. Then the Lord said to Cain, why are you angry and why is your face gloomy? If you do well, will your face not be cheerful? And if you do not do well, sin is lurking at the door and its desire is for you, but you must master it. Cain talked to his brother Able and it happened that when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Able and killed him. Then the Lord said to Cain, where is Able your brother? And he said, I do not know. Am I my brother's keeper? Then he, the Lord said, what have you done? The voice of your brother's blood is crying out to me from the ground. Now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood from your hand. When you cultivate the ground, it will no longer yield its strength to you. You will be a wanderer and a drifter on the earth. Cain said to the Lord, my punishment is too great to endure. And then Cain winds some more and God tells everyone else not to kill Cain. And Cain leaves town and resettles in the land of nod. I am paraphrasing, but that is accurate. Cain slew Able, regarded by billions of believers as the first murderer in human history, which would make the book of Genesis the first instance of true crime in human history. That's obnoxious. That feels sacrilegious to say that. I didn't say that. We'll edit that out later. The feist it to say that Cain and Able have endured thereafter as an inexhaustibly rich foundational artistic text as an eternal symbol of man's folly and man's propensity for violence and man's whatever Bob Dylan is on about here. Bob Dylan, desolation row from his 1965 album, Highway 61 Revisited. Remember when my chemical romance covered this song in 2009 for the soundtrack to the Watchmen movie? I'd forgotten about that. Anyway, here's Bob doing the Cain and Able part. Now, the question of what Bob Dylan means by any of that precisely, I will leave to the experts, to the Dillonologists, because those people scare me and I don't want them getting all pissed at me. I got enough problems, but it seems to me that the inclusion of Cain and Able here on desolation row or the exclusion of Cain and Able and the hunchback of Notre Dame, rather from all the rest of us making love or expecting rain, it seems to me that Bob Dylan is shrewd enough to realize that if you drop a Cain and Able reference into your long, discursive rock and roll song, it heightens the sense of depth and scope. It provides a literally biblical depth and scope and it thus makes your song feel more worldly and sophisticated. Hopefully that works with podcasts as well. Alas, the My Chemical Romance cover of desolation row cuts out some of the verses including the Cain and Able one, but here's part of the guitar solo. Well, I feel patriotic. The 2009 Zack Snyder Watchmen movie would have made a billion dollars and supplanted Jean Dumont atop the sight and sound all time best movies poll. If the weird Watchmen sex scene between Dan Driver and Laurie Jupiter and the Owl Ship been set to My Chemical Romance's cover of desolation row instead of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah. That's all I'm saying. If you know you know, here's Bruce Springsteen singing in the Bible, Brother Cain's Blue Able and East of Eden Mama, he was cast though you might just have to take my word for it. Bruce Springsteen Adam raised a cane from his 1978 album Darkness on the Edge of Town. Is that as aggro as macho as screechy as Bruce Springsteen has ever sounded in his life? I will leave that question to the springsteenologists because I don't want those people pissed at me either, but Bruce highlights another important aspect of the Cain's Blue Able situation. We are still being punished for it. We meaning all mankind here. I'll let Bruce explain it. You can understand him perfectly here, right? Yeah, maybe not. We're born into this life paying for the sins of somebody else's past. Cain killing Able is not just our inheritance. It's not just what we're all capable of. It's what we're all guilty of. Adam and Eve eating fruit from the tree of knowledge. That's the original sin, but Cain killing Able, that's the original felony. That's obnoxious. Wu Tang. The Wu Tang Clan. Protect your neck. 1993. That's the Jizza, aka the genius, aka the one member of the Wu Tang Clan. He put out a full length record before enter the Wu Tang 36 Chambers came out. Shout out Prince Rakeem also. That's the Jizza illustrating two other crucial components of the Cain's Blue Able discourse. One, the evil that men do to each other is nothing compared to the evil that record labels do to their own artists, especially rappers. And simpler, record labels have for sure killed more careers than Cain killed people. And the other crucial point Jizza illuminates here. Lots of cool stuff arrives with both Cain and Able, including Aunt Mabel and gum under the table. That's super helpful. Wu Tang again. A better tomorrow, the song, not the album. From 1997's Wu Tang Forever, the album, not the song by Drake or the other song by Logic. That's Method Man, adding unstable to the list of cool words that rhyme with Able. No longer brothers, we unstable. Method Man's voice also radiates absolute musical moral spiritual authority. And that goes double for her. More in hill, forgive them father, 1999, backstabbers do this. Another big takeaway from Cain's Blue Able, look out. Watch your back. Absolutely. There's another way to approach this, you know. Young Jizzi. Now just Jizzi, but formerly young Jizzi. What I do, parentheses, is just like that close parentheses. 2011. Another way to approach this is to be like phenomenal Atlanta rapper Jizzi, the snowman, and get two guns, two desert eagles, and name them Cain and Able. Does that make like a hundred percent biblical, thematic sense? No, this is my gun named Able. Ooh, scary. Yeah, but does it sound awesome? Well, hell yes, it does. I oughta mention that there is, of course, a twin brother, rap duo, literally named Cain and Able. The rapper's name is spelled K-A-N-E, whereas the biblical Cain is C-A-I-N. Cain and Able out of New Orleans. They were big on masterpiece, no limit records back in the 90s when no limit released like 40 records a year, and they all sold hundreds of thousands of copies. From their 1999 album, Am I my brother's keeper? This song is called, I Am My Brother's Keeper. You got that? Because it took me a second. Well, they turned it back into a question, and now I'm confused again. Also, do you think they argued about which one got to be Cain? Don't answer that. So in 1999, Cain and Able, A-K-A, Daniel and David Garcia, were indicted on federal cocaine trapping and charges. Eventually, they pled guilty to lesser charges, served some prison time, then they got out and made a bunch more records. But isn't that the ultimate in terms of voices conveying absolute musical moral and spiritual authority? Is they evoked a timeless foundational human tragedy of Cain and Able? Don't you ideally want two voices? And don't you ideally want them to be real life brothers? The voice of the Lord flashes forth flames of fire. His name is Gene Thornton. He was born in the Brasphite-Raced in Virginia Beach, Virginia, alongside his younger brother, Terence. Nine words. Some days I wasn't able, there was always Cain. You know what we don't talk about enough of the first two words. Them days, the line doesn't work if it's those days, or the days I wasn't able. Okay, the line still works, but it's less cool. Them is cooler. Them days I wasn't able, there was always Cain. Cain as in cocaine, right? Right. But just as crucially, it's the brotherly aspect here. The way Cain and Able are both pitted against each other, but also leaning on each other. Them days I wasn't able, meaning the good guy, there was always Cain, meaning the bad guy. And also, them days I wasn't able, meaning the one brother, there was always Cain, meaning the other brother. I keep typing out and then erasing various ridiculous hyperbolic statements. Now try my best, sincerely not to overdo it, but I suspect that there is no greater use of nine words in rap history. Them days I wasn't able, there was always Cain. Jean Thornton is known professionally as Malice. For a while, he called himself No Malice, but he's just Malice again now. But to tell you the truth, he still sounded super malicious, even when he was No Malice. Jean's younger brother, Terence Thornton, is known professionally as Pushity. And Pushity and Malice are known professionally as the Clips. Clips is an Eclipse. Everyone knows that Cain slew Able. But the Clips presupposes is, maybe he didn't. I've done that before, right? I've done the Royal Tenabombs, Eli Cash, with this book presupposes is thing before. I'm not going to look up when I did that before because let me find out I've done that like five times before. My name is Rob Harvilla. This is the 29th episode of 60 Songs that explain the 90s Cole and the 2000s. And this week we are discussing Grindin by the Virginia Beach rap duo Clips from their 2002 debut album Lord Willen. I'm supposed to do an ad break here. Idol money lies in your current account picking crumbs out of its belly button wondering, should I eat them? But when you start investing with Monzo, your money is always busy. It turns on regular investments, invests your spare change, and tops up your stocks and shares, I say. It even helps you make sense of risk and return. Monzo, the bank that gets your money moving. You could get back less than you invest. Monzo current account required UK residents 18 plus decenties apply. That was at the third time I've done the Eli Cash Royal Tenabombs, what if he didn't thing on this program? I searched Google docs for the word presupposes. The other two episodes where I did it, the spice girls and oasis speaking of brothers who've managed at press time not to kill each other. So only three Eli Cash references so far. That's better than five. That's fine. It's not great, but it's fine. They hail from Virginia Beach, Virginia. They masterfully combined minimalism, a swaggering sonic austerity, a sparingous agravitas, a sense that empty space that silence can hit just as hard as any series of fancy noises or any perfect string of nine words. They masterfully combined that minimalism with a maximalist approach to charisma. They're ludicrously charming humans. Steeped in black musical history and they're also kind of maybe if we're lucky the future of rap. Or at least I thought so in the early 2000s because I loved their debut album very, very much. And their name is any R D which spells nerd from their debut album released in 2001 and called in search of dot, dot, dot. This is any R D with a song called lap dance on lead vocals. We got for real Williams producer rapper mastermind in presario. And fashion visionary for all Williams who is currently the men's creative director for Louis Vuitton, which likely means a great deal to you. If it means anything to you for all Williams who is fond of the Gandalf hat and the weird ass clothes as he himself put it once while wrapping now. If you know for all solely is the despicable me guy, the happy guy, then maybe you think for else not about to talk about guns, but he's gunna it sounds a little different when GZ does it. I got something from this. This is the second version, the official version of the any R D in search of record, the live band version featuring the Minneapolis rock band spy mob one word. The spy mob version is vastly superior on a kind of the fact that this is the one I owned on CD. A bird in the hand and so forth. The live drums are fantastic also. That's Vita singing the hook there, VITA, Vita the rapper actress and murder ink associate. The original electronic drum machine heavy version of in search of came out in Europe. I guess Europe stay out of this. I'm sure that at some point I sought out and listened to the original European inferior in search of, but let's do that again real quick just in case I've never actually done that at all. Nah, that's nowhere near as good. Europe. So in 1996, young Virginia Beach visionaries, Farell Williams and Chad Hugo, young associates of super producer and new Jack swing architect Teddy Riley, Farell and Chad make their pop music debut as superstar production duo, the Neptune's and the Neptune start out working on hits for SWV, Mace, old dirty bastard, police, mystical, Jay Z, etc. 2001 is the first true monster Neptune's year, right? Nellie's hot in here. Usher's you don't have to call Britney's I'm a slave for you. You know what else came out in 2001? You know my all time favorite Neptune's production. You guessed it. I get this chorus stuck in my head once a month and I have a fantastic time. Truly take you home by little bow wow though it's just bow wow now best song of 2001. That's not true. Bow wow makes a cane and able reference in this song. Actually, that's not true either. What I love about getting take you home stuck in my head is the perfect harmony between the women here going, you about wow, you just don't know, etc. And the bass going burn it. The whole song is basically just burn it burn it with some modest tambourine and cowbell type action. And this is the essence of the greatness of the Neptune sound to me. It is there masterfully full to bursting use of empty space. The simplicity blown up to absurdly gargantuan proportions and by 2001 the Neptune's have got enough juice to also release in search of the debut album from their rapish rockish funkish side project any R D consisting officially of for a Williams Chad Hugo and she Haley that she Haley on the in search of album cover he's sitting on a couch holding a PlayStation controller PlayStation one wearing white socks with slides. It's a remarkably beguiling album cover somehow and I love this record very much to this day. Even if this record does not contain necessarily the best wrapping you're ever going to hear in your whole life. I'll play you the worst line on this record, which occurs on the song lap dance. Actually, it is wrapped by a gentleman named Lee Harvey as in the presidential assassin. No offense to Lee Harvey the rapper, but like you decide how much offense to take to this. I got to say that I never fully registered. Chicks nickname me pilot. They get high off my dick because I was too busy dealing with I take him to my home. They call it the cockpit. Yeesh. I play that for you now because well, I played that for you because it illustrates a crucial but under discussed point in rap music discourse, which is wrapping is hard. We don't talk enough about how hard wrapping is the greatest rappers make wrapping look easy, but it's not the cockpit line was much funnier to me. When I was 23, I'll say that. Maybe that's why no one likes you when you're 23. You know what still is funny to me now as when I was 23? This is another song in the first NERD album called tape you as in video tape you, amorously. The deployment of the word yeah here is extremely permanently funny to me. Now, the cynical amongst you will insist that NERD couldn't think of a fourth line for this chorus that only consists of eight words total and they figured they had to put something on that fourth line. So they just cynically, lazily decided on yeah. And I will retort that the yeah there is absolutely necessary and weirdly endearing in its silliness and it's precisely articulated in articulation. One thing I love about NERD songs and Neptune's produced songs broadly is there's this general vibe of like I'm serious about this by the way it sounds like I'm joking but I'm not joking unless you're mad in which case I'm just joking but otherwise yeah. The most famous example of this super jovial joking not joking mentality of course being the line in Nelly's hot in here about his friend with a pole in the basement. Phenomenal comic timing there from Nelly obviously but expertly facilitated by the Neptune's meanwhile in less successful Neptune's production news. The first clips album almost comes out in 1999 but then doesn't. This song is called the funeral. It is the debut single from the clips and this song is officially released. There's a video and everything but the same cannot be said for the rest of the clips is would be debut album set for 1999 and called exclusive audio footage. That's a clunky album title but not releasing the album at all is an overreaction. On this song the funeral, Malice and his younger brother Pushity. Pushity was then going by the name Terror spelled T-E-R-R-A-R and yeah Pushity is a better rapper name. On this song the two brothers and the clips describe their funerals. They make funeral arrangements. They speculate as to how exactly they were murdered. In this ice coldness this bone-chilling grimness clashes splendidly with the bright blaring maximalist Neptune's hook the simple and absurdly gargantuan horn loop. Also Malice describes how great he looks up in heaven. Brand new physical frame with no flaws on my throne that's guarded by angels with four fours even here in clips prehistory. Pretty much Malice still wraps like every word is cast in bronze cast in marble cast in adamantium the second half of that is even more important terror retaliate show them how real it be a split second for you blazed they probably thought you was me your brother is ideally the person who avenges your death ideally your brother avenges your death while looking enough like you that people think it's actually you back from the dead. No offense to terror as a rap name but do you mind if I just start calling him Pushity in advance? No matter how foul my burial open casket so they can see my clusters and my diamonds smiling gruesome opulence that is Pushity's eternal domain and then he starts talking to his brother Malice from beyond the grave just to reiterate ostensibly this is the clips is debut single not enough people heard this song in real time but everyone who did hear this had to be like these dudes are far out clips his career starts with a funeral just like sleepless in Seattle. Don't let Pushity's lethal barrage of syllables at the end there remember this nemesis make his family reminisce entirely distract you from the truly far out intensity of now you'll write for both of us all channel thoughts through your soul by way of introduction on their debut single the clips describe themselves in death in grueling detail just to underscore immediately that the bond between these two brothers will transcend death if necessary anyway the funeral single flops an electro record shelves the album and drops the clips but these two brothers will transcend that bullshit as well and I cannot condone this decision by electric records to essentially wipe out the clips his whole debut album but I do grudgingly admire their bravery their full hearty willingness to piss that guy off even in the pristine chapel of the sistine I'm still prone to leave you glistening more gruesome opulence from pushity this song is called breakfast in Cairo I will not try to convince you that the exclusive audio footage album is a hidden classic it leaked on the internet at the time and it briefly showed up on streaming services in 2022 but if you want to hear this record now either buy a CD on discogs dot com for $80 or you know YouTube but I will say that overcoming record label adversity is a huge part of the clips experience so they might as well start now put exclusive audio footage in the botched debut album Hall of Fame alongside 50 cents power of the dollar 50 cents pre shot nine times shelved 1999 debut album which you can buy on CD on discogs dot com for $250 don't do that meanwhile push it to your threatening to kill someone in the sistine chapel and stagger away calm with drawn and whistling I'm out to you what joy this this brings and stagger away calm withdrawn and whistling I speak in this veins so y'all know what lies across you can start breathing again okay we can start breathing again great why don't we try this again this whole clips debut album thing but first a brief uncomfortable conversation with CNN how did it work what was the business what was your job this is all this is all rock cocaine right it's all crack hello I'm not comfortable with all of that no this is malice talking to CNN in 2014 for a 15 minutes sort of micro documentary on the clips malice in this moment is officially known as no malice but never mind that now we are standing in the parking lot of an apartment complex near the thorton family childhood home in Virginia Beach Virginia and the CNN guy is trying to get malice to describe in detail how malice used to sell drugs here it's not going great this conversation but I do want to point out the perfect rapper cadence with which malice is about to say you're right but this is CNN yeah I'm not why not you you talk about it you yeah but your testimony you know you're you're absolutely right hold on give me a second because I'm getting flushed in it okay that's right now I mean why dance around it right but this is CNN that's a superstar rapper right there you know it just from the way he says you're right but this is CNN this CNN micro documentary is called brothers keeper real quick if you do a cover story or a tv news report or whatever on the clips in your headline your title isn't my brother's keeper what the fuck are you doing that's the headline don't overthink it yes everyone uses that headline for clips stuff because that's the headline obviously it's a biblical reference dude it's perfect CNN clips feature in 2014 brothers keeper vibe clips digital cover story in 2013 my brothers keeper complex clips cover story in 2025 my brothers keeper are there other examples from other publications in other years yeah probably I'm busy right now but so then malice relents and he talks just a little bit with CNN about how he used to sell drugs but he also talks about what it's like to be a superstar rapper who wraps a lot about how he used to sell drugs I feel like hip hop personally is the only genre that eats its babies now you can take a white kid or the white generation they're enjoying hip hop eating it up and paying for it in loving it but they're not killing each other and let's just keep this in mind going forward the eternal the universal tension in hip hop between generally the genre's biggest artists and generally the genre's target audience the racial tension between usually black artists describing experiences and environments unfamiliar to a goodly percentage of their partly white audience the clips wrap a lot about selling drugs like a lot like somewhere between 75 and 90% of the time whereas a great deal of the clips is audience does not and has not sold drugs there is therefore for many of us an inherent voyeurism a tourism aspect to the clips and that is a little discomforting but that discomfort can be productive to quote a push a T-song that I love so much that I already quoted it actually if you know you know and if you don't you don't and if you don't know they know you don't know just keep that in mind the actual official first clips album is released in 2002 and is called Lord Willem I speak with corrupted tongue recognize the underworld since I was young back in 84 when I saw crocodile tubs as the law his eyes got big when they televised that role I speak with corrupted tongue wraps push a T 12 seconds into the first official clips album which debuts at number four on the billboard album chart beaten out only by in descending chart order Eminem Nelly and Avril Lavigne these eyes got big when they televised that raw this song is called intro it lasts only two minutes we get a lot accomplished in that two minute most rap songs called intro do not provide this much useful information this album Lord Willem begins with push a T and malice explaining what compelled them to start selling drugs crocodile tubs for those of you not born in the 20th century they're the cops from Miami vice not the movie where Colin Farrell says I'm a fiend from ohitos the 80s TV show Miami vice is apparently a huge part of what compelled clips to start selling drugs my mom was sure to see it coming me running up and down the stands too quick coming Miami vice theme music called the road made me hold up I see the villains impact now that I'm older called her own is a bad guy from Miami vice I see the villains impact now that I'm older wraps push a T and maybe what he means is now that I'm older I realize I don't actually want to be the bad guy but then again maybe he doesn't mean that meanwhile a monster opening line from malice here I even went by the book at first until I realized nine to five wouldn't quench my thirst wraps malice evoking his mother as well their mother push a T and malice's parents their mother mill dread thorton and their father gene Elliott thorton senior clips his parents loom over the clips catalog lovingly if somewhat disapprovingly though then again maybe all that villain talk is really a family inheritance with my grandma who distributed yet she have flown in from the Bahamas I shift that soft white and pumped from her crib is one of those effortless cocaine based double and tundra clips rhymes that you start to take for granted after a while because you get a new one every 10 seconds and here malice evokes his grandmother as well blame her maybe for how clips turned out you're born into this life paying for the sins of somebody else's past that's from the bible actually that's from Bruce Brainstine same thing really i this song is called young boy a goodly amount of lord willon is dedicated to sketching out this family tradition to placing malice and push a T and a proud lineage of coke wrappers of lovable anti heroes with hearts of gold and wrists of ice and they are aided in this quest immensely by the tape you guy i it is truly wild to hear for real Williams in full super charismatic goofball falsetto mode dropping f bombs on clips hooks indistinguishable from the hooks indespicable me movies i love it randy newman approves it's time to introduce my kids to the clips no it isn't lord willon has produced entirely by the nephews and personally i'm all for it i don't talk about cars let's talk about it no talk about how's this talk about it no talk about juice let's talk about it no talk about money but talk about i love the little dorky perfect toy whistle there so much that's on it's called let's talk about it we got germane du pre at lanter producer rapper mastermind imprezario germane du pre helping out on that one the opulence sometimes grew some opulence sometimes just regular opulence the opulence is unrelenting on lord willon a substantial percentage of this record is just malice and push a tee pointing to their cars their jewels their watches their guns their clothes their balconies and the whole time they're going that's gods will over there and that's gods will over there and that's gods will over there but never mind that though i'm just showing off as i do in the portion with the top loss malice has a glass bottom speedboat also now feels like a good time to say that it had never fully registered for me that the lord willon album cover is push a tee in malice riding in a convertible with jesus in the back seat black jesus i believe black jesus complete with a crown of thorns though jesus seems pretty chill about it it is god's will that clips get a convertible and it is also god's will that they use it to give jesus a lift don't let the opulence distract you from the violence though even if the violence is often very very funny yeah they talk about this and that got it fucked up like i'm all about rap word is i'm loaded they want a piece of that i respond with four words rat that tech tech that song is called ego and push a tee has got one of those two along with myriad firearms all right man enough screwing around let me ask you something is the forl intro to the clip song grindin annoying is for else intro here superfluous or absolutely gloriously world historically necessary because generally historically the forl intro it hasn't annoyed me but despite the cool slick echo i did not ever think it was necessary no five adverbs in seven words right there by the way it's ridiculous i tried to be all sneaky and break it up with a song clip but that only made it more noticeable no the seismic importance of forl intro to grindin was not made apparent to me until last week when i saw clips do this song live i saw clips live last week in yellow springs ohio at a tiny comedy club owned by davis chappelle i'm not bragging about this i was visibly painfully hopelessly not cool enough to actually be at this show that's four more adverbs it was one of those shows where they make you lock up your phone in a little pouch so you can't record or even write down anything and i almost didn't get in because i brought a library book with me to read while i was in line you see what i mean about being painfully uncool and security was like sorry you can't bring in a library book and i was like what and they were like you could meet somebody inside who gives you a pencil and then take notes in the library book and i was like nobody in there wants to talk to me and furthermore i would never write in a library book and then i had to co check my fucking hoodie with a library book crammed into one of the pockets and then they let me in and i enjoyed a bunch of songs about selling cocaine everyone in the room with the clips everyone watching the clips do grind in live everyone recited the feral intro that's when i realized how important that part is when everyone joined feral feral wasn't physically there last but i was there everyone joined feral everyone went the world is about to feel something that they never felt before and it was a lovely moment truly because true greatness does not always need to announce itself but sometimes it does grindin is going to be a big hit but not like a chart topping hit it peaked at number 30 on the billboard hot 100 which is offensive if you want the truth and clips are going to be big stars but not industry coddled superstars lots of label bullshit lots of annoying delays lots of moved release dates lots of logistical chaos in the clips this future and in eclipse fans future let them have this let feral and let the clips announce the greatness of grindin before the greatness of grindin actually technically arrives from getter we getter the backyard the yard i sell it with one whip and soft the hard i'm the neighborhood pusher call me subwoofoo because i pump beans like that jack but then again the greatness of grindin arrived immediately because the first truly great element of grindin is just the beat the simple conclusive absurdly gargantuan drum beat like every kid and every lunch america banging on every lunch table simultaneously the miles the planets the galaxies of empty space packed into the beat to grindin it's tempting to say that anybody any rapper could have had a huge hit with a beat this fantastic but i think the opposite is true this beat is so huge and expansive and fantastic that it would overwhelm it would annihilate most rappers even good ones even great ones and so it takes push a tee there and it takes malice here to combine absolute authority with absolute calm to rap so precisely so forcefully the two voices of the lord make the deer give birth and strip the forest spare an in davis chapelles comedy club all cry glory i love malice's 20s spinning like windmills it's the specificity of the clips as rappers as world class describers of wealth of power of excellence of godliness it is likewise tempting to lament that clips peak with grindin that this song is so immense and so immortal that any career that starts with this song is an inevitable letdown thereafter the second real clips album hell half no fury comes out four years later in 2006 but only after myriad delays and general record industry calamity so many cold killer labels and so much money stuck to so much gum under the table in the meantime the clips join up with a couple rappers from philadelphia form the reup gang and put out three volumes of the we got it for cheap mixtape series which are still eternally beloved records by the most online rap fan you know personally maybe that's what makes the clips post grindin not a letdown the underdog status the sense that every new clips record is a fight a grind a small miracle and as well known as the clips might be they will also always be critical darlings and best kept secrets they are goliaths disguised as davids there is nowhere to go but down after grindin and so the clips stayed mainstream but also kind of sorta went underground consider my raw demeanor the icing on the cake rap smalas and we do we do the clips put out their third album called till the casket drops in 2009 and hellhath no fury is better but this one's still pretty good but then another calamity befalls the clips and befalls clips fans in 2012 malice renames himself no malice and refuses to rap about cocaine or violence and so forth anymore data cutting his music instead to profanity free religious themes he announces this by a twitter with a video of himself dressed in a suit looking down at himself dead in a coffin wearing a hoodie and he added a bunch of bible verses to this announcement too a very quick reading from Ephesians chapter four verse 31 English standard version let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you along with all malice and this was not a renunciation of all the clips that accomplished and it was certainly not a renunciation of his brother but it wasn't abandonment of sorts that's why he's no malice in the CNN thing that's why he's explaining to CNN that hip hop eats its babies also at one point the CNN guys driving with push a T in the CNN guy goes he picked Jesus over you and push a T goes yes he did yes he did hey you know what other famous musical icon found religion and radically altered their previous mostly secular career mace yes okay mace him too i meant this guy i don't have the inclination to look back on any mistake like a man i now behold this chain of events that i must breathe i meant Bob Dylan that's a song called every grain of sand from 1981 in Bob Dylan's famously polarizing and fascinating Christian period did Bob get even more nasal when he found God he kind of did like cane i now behold this chain of events that i must break bobs born again era would not last terribly long but he's carried a faint profound echo of born again era with him thereafter and so it is with malice who is malice again and the clips are an active wrap group again in the 2025 clips album let God sort them out is by far my favorite album of the year thus far and yes it does include a song called mtbtf which stands for Mike Tyson blow to the face that's a cocaine reference probably but this record also starts with a song called the birds don't sing that is a tremendously sad and beautiful and vulnerable ode to push a tease and malice's parents who are both gone now now you'll write for both of us all channel thoughts through your soul grindin is the beginning the true beginning of one of the wildest and greatest and most chaotic careers in rap music history but this song is also great enough to carry with it a note of finality one matter anyway is settled the thorton brothers are among the best to ever do it this is the result of my vision react with precision but God only knows my intention but selling dope is a religion the hammer's in position I can show the different sorry I couldn't help myself that's malice on the mic Tyson blow to the face song this is the result of my vision react with precision but God only knows my intention but selling dope is a religion the clips are among the best gospel rappers to ever do it also because they've shown us that there are so many gospels from which to read we are shocked and delighted to be joined once again by our true best friend Shay Serrano ringer alumnus bestselling author superstar podcaster tv creator guy vhs movie collector et cetera his next book is called expensive basketball and you can pre-order it right now thank God you're here Shay thank you for being here i'm very excited to be here Rob it's been too long that's how long it's been it's been way too long i agree with you uh speaking up too long ago uh i believe it was 2015 you published the rap year book oh man 10 years that's why uh 10 picking of course one rap song for every year the best and most important song of the year uh and i don't want to spoil the whole book but you picked grindin by the clips for 2002 can you please tell the people why grindin is the most important rap song of the year 2002 whenever you're working on a project like that you want to look for stuff like tent pole moments flag planting moments moments where something shifted right so you know a very easy example is something like nothing but a g-thing prior to that most of the drug related rap had to do with crack because it was a reflection of what was happening in America at the time in the late 80s and in early 90s crack was sort of tearing through everything and then dr dr ratio's up and all of a sudden oh we're not doing crack anymore now we're doing weed and it's not this like caustic violent thing it's like a party drug and it's fun and we're we're at the barbecue and we're playing volleyball and it's great right so you're looking for for songs that do something like that i should make your way through the history of rap and when clips shows up with grindin in 2002 produced by for real it number one sounded like nothing had ever sounded before rap was rap was very much in that moment owned by the south and then here comes this new this new group this new sound they had had stuff before but this was like their their moment when they came out of nowhere and they're like oh we saw rap's gonna sound like this for a little while now this is a thing you're going to have to consider forever and so if a group shows up and they can do something like that then you go okay this is a very important moment there was no other song that did that that year and that's why yeah the other thing i really like about the grindin chapter is you point out that the wire premiered in 2002 right the HBO show about the drug trade in Baltimore one of the best TV shows ever made like it's 2002 the peak year for pop culture glorifying drug dealers or does 1983 still win because the Scarface movie came out 1983 it's gonna be hard to ever top Scarface right because all of the stuff that comes after that is influenced by that you know what I mean yeah if we if to take a to take a another rap example there was gangster rap before two puck showed up but after two puck showed up he was like this is what it looks like now and this is this is what that persona is in that images where this now right Scarface is that any of the pop culture drug stuff like that's the first thing you go to i don't know that anybody will ever be able to wrestle the crown away from from Latino Al Pacino this is fucking awesome it's great he is one of one yes i love your description in the book also of the grind and beat like you say you said it sounded like someone was beating on a garage door which connected into the past but it also sounded like someone was trying to make a phone call from outer space which connected it to the future does grind and still kind of sound like the future to you now it does that all pocket of music that came out around then the whole like Virginia scene it all still sounds like it's from the future we haven't missy gotten that we haven't gotten there yeah yeah missy Elliott you go listen to to super duper fly and it's like we're still 25 years behind you know it came out 30 years ago or whatever 27 years ago yeah it it feels like the future and i think it's always going to to feel like that in the same way that the matrix will always feel like the internet as a movie it just like it's it like latched on it defined what that sound was and you go okay well this will always be the flying cars and the in the teleportation devices of of rapper music it's it's incredible to listen to because as you mentioned we're approaching the 25 years that this song has been out and it's still a quarter of a century ago it came out and it still feels like we haven't caught up to it right and it's it's incredible is grind and the best the single best Neptune's beat of all time Jay oh I think yeah I think he's okay it's the first one anyone is going to say let's go with that let's go with oh this is a silly one remember rock star oh sure then then any artisan oh i love rock star absolutely let's go with but yeah grind and grind and is then is the number one years here's the first thing they're going to say after my name type of yes type of performance or creation you also point out in the book and I think this is important that clips is former manager Anthony Gonzalez was arrested in 2009 for allegedly a master mining like a 20 million dollar drug ring and he did 30 years in prison like is it important when you listen to the clips that you know that all of this is possibly real or at least based on real events like do you think of this music as fiction or like distinctly non-fiction I don't think it's important in that if it were fake or if they were lying about any of the pieces or are lying about any of the pieces that it in any way would make it feel any less artistic right it wouldn't affect that at all lion doesn't line to after Rick Ross showed up in 2006 he did kind of kill the concept of lying being bad yeah nobody cared anymore it just became how how cool can you sound when you say it right right and so and so separate of anything else the clips that push it to you and malice they all they have that they sound cool when they say they do they do they really do they could talk about anything at all and it sounds like the coolest thing you've ever heard it's an addition that that there's a piece of it that makes you go like are they tell it they might are they are they telling the truth right now you know what I mean it's additive but it's not necessarily important when you're listening to it anyway right no I know you mean I you also of course hosted co hosted the no skips podcast for the ringer you know we each episode was about a no skips album and you did Lord willing you did the clips record I I love the category super lying right where it's like the one lie like like to just does the concept of super lying apply to the clips at all no because again if they do tell a matter push a tea tells a lie it just sounds it sounds so cool that you're like I'm happy that you're lying to me right now great thank you I'm honored I'm honored that you were deceiving me absolutely I did does the clips work if they're not brothers like should there be more brother duos in rap music or were the clips are the clips so great that we should call all we're ahead and no one you we should there should be no more brother duos after the clips because they sort of mastered it I think the answer for this is the same as the the lying thing it doesn't affect the art at all mm-hmm it's like bun b in pym c being lifelong best friends and you're like that makes sense it makes sense that that they play off of each other the way that they do when when push a tea and mallas are wrapping on any song pick any song they've ever put out from any album they've ever put out over the past two and a half decades right pick any one that you want there's never a moment when it feels like one of them is in the way of the other one right and that's a byproduct of growing up together being around each other for all of those hours and days and months and years so it's additive in that way but again I don't think it's necessarily like they would be worse if they weren't brothers or they would be less cool but it is cool that they are it's very cool that they are are you a mallas guy or a push a tea guy or is this not the kind of group where you have to pick one I think you always have to pick one I think always that's a good rule okay it's a lie to be like there equally this and nobody is ever equally the same even if it's a fraction of an amount okay sometimes a guy is better than the other guy on a particular song or on a particular album or whatever so it just depends on what you happen to be feeling in the moment when Lord Willan came out I was like push a tea is my fucking dude that's my guy everything he's saying in here every every line he's writing when an incredible writer he is I'm in and again this is not like 70 30 this is like 50.2 versus 49.8 right we're right here that we're battling we're battling in the in the fucking F1 10th of a second right 100 meters at the at the Olympics like that's where we are right now no liles winning with a lean at the finish right then you go to hell hat in a fury and it's like oh Alice this is my palace album okay and I get it bounces right in front this this latest one let God sort of out which I think Rob I think this I think it has a chance to be the best clips album that we've ever gotten I know what you mean Lord Willan is still in first place okay let God sort him out is creeping up it's fantastic you know what I mean I'm trying to filter out recency bias but I agree with you completely I love yeah you we need some time with it I need I need ask me again and five years and I will like go like a full honest answer but right now it feels like this is the first album we've gotten since Lord Willan that felt like it could catch it right and that's where we are now and you're listening to the songs and you're like like it's when it starts out and you get that this incredibly written beautiful sort of heartbreaking song right about their parents who who have both passed away and you have on the version thing you have push a wrapping his verse about one parent you have malice wrapping the other verse about the other parent finding his and it's oh my god it's just again incredible writing is beautiful but as you're going through it I I feel myself li oh I think this is malice for me this is this is 50.2 right to malice you know even though I love both of them if I'm going to pick one of them at this particular moment right now give me malice 50.2 to push his 49.8 I saw a tweet this morning where they were going through each song on the new record and assigning it to either malice or push a and it was six six like it was a boxing card like it was like the boxing round card and they were equal I agree with you completely that one of them has to be better but one of them has to be better by the smallest possible increment of better you know allowable in rap music that makes absolute sense yeah and that's that's a really fun idea fun way to go about it if you have an album by a group or by a duo by who who won this song let's count them out and there's 13 there's 13 songs on there can't be a tie it's not going to be a tie pick it pick it pick it's what what fun it is what what a fortune we have to be able to to do this with an album because there's always a chance there's always a chance your favorite artist puts an album out and it's not that good right four times clips has put an album out which means four times they had a chance to blow it to screw something up to be not good that's not counting you know solo albums or anything and but four times they have delivered and every time I imagine if you're in their spot every time it gets a little bit harder of course trickier and the expectations are continually rising but the fact that they did it again the fact that they played their roll out so perfectly right the fact that they did their MPR tiny desk and started it with Virginia it was like every step every step that they made was fucking perfect and I just I think I tweeted this at some point I don't remember when there's but it's during the rollout and they're putting their music out is that right if the album had come out and it's like that it feels like when you listen to clips when you watch them talk about rap when you see them in an interview it feels like they treat they treat their music like it's high art right that's how that that's how they approach it and because they treat it that way it feels that way and and I think that's the best possible place a rapper can be a musician can be is when they show up with a thing and they're like this is special here's why it's special here's the time that went into it and the ever then went into it and you can feel it when you're playing it I love it I love it and it makes me feel old even to say this but I wonder if there aren't many rappers rap groups like this anymore like most new super popular rap now is like not as lyrical you know not as crisply enunciated like it's not as focused on like bars or punchlines or whatever like do you wish there were more younger newer groups like the clips now or is it kind of cool that there aren't I think it's cool that nobody is trying to be like the like the clips because nobody could nobody could do what they do which is part of what makes them special like a like a when a rapper or a musician makes music that it sounds like nobody else can make is when like sign me up every single time so I don't I don't need for there to be a new clips I just need for there to be some new duos doing their own version of their own thing and they show up and they do the same thing they treat it like art like high art and it begins to it begins to feel like that so no I don't think we don't we don't need to we don't need a new clip we still have clips we don't need a new one right right let the let the young kids make the music that they feel compelled to make and it's and it's going to touch you the same way that clips does so you said you're thinking about this new album possibly toppling Lord willing five years from now but like at this exact moment Lord willing is still the best clips album like what is it about this record for you you know grind it I think is the peak of this record but the whole thing like what is it about this record that still makes it so indomitable to you well because you'll are you're always going to have the benefit of the of the newness right sure the beginning of the franchise the debut right sure right sure it's it's like it's an introduction to this new to this new world really because this is again just 2002 so the internet was around but it didn't exist the way that we know it today no it hadn't it hadn't connected all of the pieces of the world yet right I was living in Texas when this album came out I was in I was living in Huntsville Texas right I was still in college when this album came out there was there was Virginia might as well have been South Korea for all I knew like I had no idea how to get there or where it was or or what it looked like or what it sounded like and then this album shows up and you go like oh oh that's cool like it it it has that feeling it's always going to have that feeling to it in a way that the other albums can't the reason that this new one is starting to feel like it's got a chance to chase them down is because this new one feels like oh we have fully grown fully matured push a T in malice wrapping in a wrapping in a new in a new sort of way a way that they weren't wrapping before in a manner that they weren't wrapping for it on the on the previous album because they're you know older together it's a natural byproduct it's the same thing we watch happen with Jay Z when he put a 44 out or 44 it's like oh this sounds so much different than anything else he had done because it was a new phase of his life right the new clips album has that part going for it in the way that Lord Willan has this introduction this announcement this declaration that we're going to be in your life if you like music we're going to be in your life for the next 30 years or whatever however long they feel like making music for but that's why Lord Willan right now is still for me at the at the at the top it's it's what an incredible album that is yeah so you're in Texas in 2002 do you hear Lord Willan and think of them as Southern rappers is Virginia Beach this south in the way that you understand geographically or culturally this south oh that's a good question I don't know the technical answer of is this the south or is this not the south in the way that like the famous Pimsy Atlanta isn't the south argument thing that happened right right that was like a yeah that's a real conversation that was going on back then but when I think about rap it doesn't feel like it doesn't feel like anything other than Virginia it feels like like like a like new ground breaking it was like when you know rap starts in New York and then all of a sudden we've got all of this stuff happening in LA and it's like oh my God there's a whole new thing over here it's not like a version of this it's a new thing and then the south pops up boom and then it explodes and it takes over oh my God there's a new thing it that's what Virginia feels like which is which is so interesting because it's such a small space on the map it's this tiny little thing that created this this like waterfall of amazing music so it feels to me less like we're gonna categorize it with the south and we're like we're gonna it deserves to be categorized as its own thing I don't know how people from Virginia feel about that what do they consider themselves in the south but I would assume they would say no we're we're our we're our own universe here yeah I think that's the cool thing to be I think if you live in New York City anywhere south of New Jersey is the south culturally it feels like that sometimes I my other favorite no skips category is the damn that's hardest fuck award for the hardest line on an album single hardest line and like I have to imagine that's super tough for a record like Lord Will and and like maybe you remember the actual line and maybe you don't now but like what is the hardest line on the first clips record Jay oh man so part of the reason that listening to clips is so much fun is because push a tee and malice are incredible writers like mm-hmm actual bonafide poets like real real writers you I imagine if they wanted to they could write easily a novel and it would be really really good so picking out the hardest thing which is like a category they seem to specialize in is I mean I so a few of them that stand out but yeah there's a malice line on the way says see in my household it was quite unique playing hide and seek you might find a key and it's like picture you're a child playing hide and seek in a house having just a beautiful fun time with your friends or with your brother or whatever and you climb into the laundry basket and you go on top of your head I was gonna go in that like yeah under there and then what's what is what am I standing on and and it's a fucking key of cocaine like that's hard that's so incredibly it's very hard it's so incredibly hard there was a there was a line in there where where I think it was a malice and he talks about he talks about his grandma and he says it's yet a cigarette dangling at a 45 degree angle I love that yes right and that like you hear that and you go like that's incredible writing because it puts this picture into your brain immediately it's a it's a perfect example boy I think writer talk about all the time as you go to show don't tell like let the reader have it in their brain and paint the picture themselves rather than saying whatever there's that one in there I think my favorite one though the one that made me just be like oh my god this is like crazy is a push a line where he says he says like in Virginia we smirked at the Simpson trial talking about the OJ Simpson trial yeah yeah and he says it like we smirk that it which is in and of itself crazy but then he says yeah I guess the chase was wild but what's the fuss about this is a double murder like a famous double murder pretty famous where somebody's heads were almost cut off and he's like what's the fuss about what's the fuss that it's such a common thing around here Tuesday what do we do yeah yeah yeah that's hard that's hard that's pretty hard many fine candidates for the damn that's hard as fuck uh J do you think it is reductive to describe the clips as coke wrappers like are they more than that of course they're more than that yeah okay I mean I get why people do it I know what I never understood is I never understood the criticism for it all right even if that was all that they wrap about which it's not it's not they established that we just talked about on the very first song of their album for a song on the new record yeah they're talking about this whole other thing their parents yeah right but it's not all that they all that they're rabbi but I but they're very good at when they do and they're very it's very memorable when they do so I get the that people would call that out but I never understood the criticism for it it seems to me like criticizing Steph Curry for shooting too many three or like criticizing Shaq for dunking all the time yeah Steph Curry is the greatest shooter in the history of the world why would I not want him to shoot 12 three pointers again what are you talking about if you have two guys who who can do this thing better than anybody has ever done it nobody has ever talked drugs in the way that push it in and malice do why would I not want to hear as much of that as possible what are you talking about why are you complaining about this thing it doesn't make any sense at all Rob why would I not want Rob Harvilla to write as much as possible and podcast as much as possible he's very good at it well I want more of it that's very kind thank you I'm still thinking about you in the laundry hamper with a with a key that's hard that's hard what what would your kids find and what were you hiding in the laundry hamper that's what I want to know because that because at my house they climb there's a fucking box of honey buns the mess is in my hamper it's not a key yeah right right right right right old meal cream pies they would probably melt in there but that's a bad place to keep them but yeah that's it would it would be some sort of food item and that's plain hide and seek you might find an oatmeal cream pie that's what you're just going to wrap about that's right that's a lot of syllables also that's harder to rhyme that than with key to you just to wrap up you sort of get into it in the chapter on grinded but like when you listen to the clips shake like do you imagine that you yourself are a super rich cocaine dealer like are you living vicariously through the clips or does absolutely okay so you like it's like you're in the car you are the drug dealer superstar in that moment when you listen to them when that album is playing yes when it's when it's going on and I'm driving home on my way on my way home Rob from from my from my from my office full of VHS tapes where I just spent where I just spent nine hours typing an email to somebody type it that's what I did all day long when I when I'm on my way home from work and let God's short amount is playing and it and and the volume is up and the windows are down and I'm listening to to Mike Tyson blow to the face that's the track man I'm 100 percent certain there's a four pounds of cocaine in the trunk of my car hidden in a in a spare tire well underneath all the VHS tapes and I'm and I'm just praying I don't get pulled over sure that's how I feel when I'm listening to it and then I get home and I turn the radio off and then I go inside and I eat my honey buns you eat your oatmeal cream pies no that was me you're the honey buns okay that's what a gift that is that the clips what a gift well this has been fantastic Shay thank you so much for coming here and let's let's talk again let's talk about some more music soon Rob that's right thanks very much to our guest this week Shay Serrano thanks very much as always to our producers Christopher Sutton Olivia Creary and Justin sales and thanks very much to you for listening and now please let's all go listen to Grindan by the clips we'll see you next week