By RAYMOND CUMMINGS
Diet Coke, fat-free frozen yogurt, Tab, heart-friendly spaghetti sauce, light cigarettes, low-sodium hotdogs, many other reduced-risk options-qua-substitutes besides: this is how our society wimps out in cases where we want to over-indulge without guilt or health-impairing consequences, because we lack the intrinsic self-discipline to consume in moderation. So with our supermarket-sweep goods, and so with Virginia coke-rap duo Clipse. "I'm Good" is, in essence, Clipse-lite, Clipse without gratuitous drug-talk and gunplay, Clipse defanged, Clipse embracing compromise at long last: if you wanna ship impeccibly-honed-yet-soulless odes to hustling that white in mass quantities, you've gotta make a few concessions that betray your core competencies. Ergo Pharrell's self-congratulatory adlibs and a barrage of candy-coated Baretta synths, ergo "Today was a good day/Ice cubes on my chest," ergo dumb jokes about "girls" who "cut they eyes" being samurais. Also: Pusha T's just-chillin'-on-the-ave swag tapdances all over Malice's I'll-answer-this-booty-call-whenever-I-get-around-to-it arrogance, while neither rapper's professed zen rings true given the duo's storied 00s travails. But Clipse have always been honest, if only in their own minds; why stop fronting now, a few months prior to make-or-break third album Till The Casket Drops, when every other pre-release single has come and gone with little to no ceremony? If they're lying, they're dying: fair enough. Here, they're barely trying, letting the beat do all the work, gambling that by pretending not to care they'll expand their rapt cult enough that all those riches, all that bubbly, and all those cars they rhyme about become actual.
1 comment:
You know, for all their acclaim, I've just never really been that impressed with The Clipse. I mean, it's not a good thing that whenever you type in The Clipse in Youtube "Grindin" is the first song that comes up. That song is like seven years old.
S
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