130. Clipse - We Got It 4 Cheap Vol. 2 (2005)

Ah, the hip-hop mixtape. Usually, it's an art form designed to be listened to and quickly forgotten; a chance to show off a rapper's skills and tide fans over until a real album. But it took four years for Clipse to follow up Lord Willin' with the masterpiece Hell Hath No Fury, and this was one of the only things we got to tide us over. Clipse seem to have realized this and stepped up their game--certainly it's one of the few mixtapes that is comparable in quality to a regular album. Granted it still falls victim to some of the same problems as other mixtapes (some mismatches between beats and vocals, outdated cultural references, occasional moments where the rappers seem like they're treading water, underwritten lines) but the highpoints outweigh the low ones. The first half of this record is one hot line after another--"Re-Up Intro" in particular is about as great a trunk-banger as I've ever heard; car stereo systems were built to blast this track. Their take on the Game's "Hate It Or Love It" knocks his out of the water, and "Zen" is just as much of a classic single as it ever was. So overall this is about as great as an intrinsically flawed type of record can be; mixtapes are generally never more than placeholders, but this is one of the first times the word "mixtape" didn't seem to connote "something we threw together in two days to keep us in the public eye." Great, and a nice appetizer to the atom bomb these guys would drop on our heads a year later.

MY RATING: 8.1

Clipse - "Re-Up Intro"

155. Clipse - Lord Willin' (2002)

As good as this is it still seems like a dry run for the masterful Hell Hath No Fury four years later; there's little this one does that the other one doesn't do better, and what few things this does that the other doesn't (uptempo party stuff), probably didn't need to be done at all. Generally the more uptempo the beat is, the worse Clipse do with it. They're masters of creepy, disturbing rap music, telling tales of utter amorality, and the best of this stuff follows that pattern. Still, this is vintage Neptunes, and Pusha T and Malice are so well-matched that they seem to be split from the same consciousness; their rapping is top-level the whole way through, completely unmatched in its violent realism, and it's only when the album tries to be "fun" that it fails. The Neptunes' presence is obvious right away: simple, live-sounding beats and minimal samples, and while they would become far more adventurous on the followup record, this one still has some amazing moments ("Virginia" and "Comedy Central" seem to me to be the standouts here). The famous "Grindin'" is worth the price of admission all by itself, a rap track that uses syncopated sound effects (doors slamming) as the beats, creating an astonishing atmosphere. There are no skits, and the album flows very well, but again it's one of those unlucky albums that lives in the shadow of a superior one.

MY RATING: 7.8

Clipse - "Virginia"