KEYS OPEN DOORS

After three years of label drama, Virginia pushers-turned-poets Clipse are free at last

By Dave Morris

“My brother and I, we always say the only thing we really can only count on is what we do, as far as writing the lyrics and what we come up with.”

Malice, one half of hip-hop duo Clipse, sighs down the phone, on the line from his home state of Virginia where he and his brother, Pusha T, are taking a break from their latest tour. “Outside of that, you put your foot down and hope for the best, because you can only take care of things you're in control of. So to cry about promotion and all of that... you just gotta take the good with the bad.”

If their story ended right here, you could say that hip-hop duo Clipse rose to prominence with Lord Willin', their first official album, which went gold in the US in '02; and that their fall came late in '06 with the release of their second LP, Hell Hath No Fury, which sold less than half as many copies as their first album.

It would be a lot easier to file Gene (Malice) and Terrence (Pusha-T) Thornton's story with all the other tales of once-successful artists being unable to catch the public's attention than it would be to untangle the lawsuits, three years of record label-induced delays, stubbornness on both sides and plain bad luck that doomed the claustrophobic, paranoid, brilliant Hell Hath No Fury to the cut-out bin.

But if history agrees that HHNF really is as good as critics from all corners say– influential rap mag XXL and many others lavished perfect scores on it; so did I, in this publication; GQ even self-parodically described it as “the gangsta rap Yankee Hotel Foxtrot” – then tomorrow's music historians will have to explain its commercial failure to younger generations. Hip-hop doesn't generally equate greatness with obscurity, and plenty of classic rap albums went platinum, from Raising Hell to The Chronic to Life After Death. If Hell Hath No Fury was so great, why didn't more people buy it?

Most observers blame Jive Records. After a merger that found them going from being labelmates with Snoop Dogg on their producer partners The Neptunes' vanity imprint Star Trak to sharing a front office with Britney Spears, one can only imagine how a pop powerhouse like Jive figured they could market two thugs who proudly claimed in their big hit (“Grindin'”) that they “move 'caine like a cripple.”

Of course, the other big hit on Lord Willin' was “When The Last Time,” the kind of straight-up club track that was notably missing from their follow-up LP, which was acclaimed for its frigid beats and internal rhymes (“So kill the comparison / I'm South Beach sippin' on Sarafin / Welfare check nigga, I never been / Cook money clean through Maryland / Shit, accountant just gasp at the smell of it”) but not for any rump-shaking singles. Southern rappers have dominated dancefloors for years now by spewing out catchy but lyrically thin club bangers, and Malice doesn't particularly identify with that regional sound.

“We're from Virginia, and you know Virginia's never been dirty south. But I think our fans definitely know who we are, and I think they appreciate the fact that we do bring back a northern nostalgia.”

He's not kidding about the nostalgia. What seemed like mere minutes into our interview, the group's publicist told me I had time for one more question, and I panicked. I busted out an interviewing chestnut, that well-worn “if you could be in any crew...” saw.

“Wow, it's a few,” Malice replies. “Uh... OK, Bad Boy [during the] Lox and Mase era....”

Malice went on to name Death Row and the Juice Crew in their respective heydays, but I was stuck on the first. I thought I had misheard. Puff Daddy's label? (And didn't he mean the Notorious B.I.G. era?) But The Lox – three hard-bitten MCs from Yonkers, New York, who covered the glossy Diddy-Pop productions they were given (“If You Think I'm Jiggy,” anybody?) in grimy verses – are brothers in arms to Clipse, having endured an even more notorious public feud with their own label in the late '90s. If you want to pinpoint the moment where record company executives figured out once and for all that hard, lyrically intricate street rap was never going to be as successful on the charts as featherweight pop-rap, look to the rise of Puff Daddy and the fall of The Lox.

History is kinder to noble failures. Nas' Illmatic didn't go platinum until 2001. Jadakiss and Styles P from The Lox (now D-Block) are street heroes, and probably bank more cash from doing cameos on other peoples' records than most rappers make on their own. And Clipse have their next moves all planned out, coming first with their Re-Up Gang album with Ab-Liva and Sandman, two equally grimy Philadelphia MCs who appeared on their career-sustaining We Got It For Cheap mixtape series.

“Everybody in Philly,” Malice says, dragging out his words. “Eeeevvvvvverybody in Philly spit, and not only do they spit, but it's like they're convincing. They make me believe it.”

Question is, will the Re-Up Gang record come out on Jive? In previous interviews, Clipse have said they'll finish the three albums left on their contract, which sounds like the beginning of the end. (Let us not forget the breakup of A Tribe Called Quest, generally attributed to their own stormy relationship with Jive.) I ask Malice if they can talk about what labels they're in discussions with.

“Right now Clipse are free agents,” he says. “There are a few labels that are interested.”

Clipse have been released from their Jive contract?

“Yeah, yeah.”

Malice won't say who's courting them, nor does he even sound particularly relieved. But he will make one concession to the lifting of the millstone that the group, and by extension their fans, have carried since 2003. I ask whether now that they're off Jive – supposedly the cause of their shift towards a darker sound – they'll go back to making more lighthearted music.

“I'm getting there,” he says. “I'm getting to like a brighter day, I guess. But [making a track] is all very emotional man, and depending on the beat and how it sounds, that's how we start building.

“But you can rest assured it's going to be a page from my heart, definitely, wherever I'm at.”

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