Stream: Clipping, ‘Say the Name’

Kevin Bronson on August 27th, 2020

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Clipping’s songs are like walking barefoot across broken glass. While being prodded with hot irons. While evil spirits chant ominously. On the edge of a cliff.

Deliciously menacing as usual, “Say the Name” is the new single from the L.A. experimental rap trio of Daveed Diggs, Jonathan Snipes and William Hutson. It’s the first song from Clipping’s new album “Visions of Bodies Being Burned,” due to arrive, like any self-respecting horrorcore album would, the week before Halloween.

They say it’s a companion to last October’s “There Existed an Addiction to Blood” and promise that, like sequels in the horror film genre, the new album will boast a higher body count, more elaborate kills and indestructible monsters. The songs were originally made with those on “Addiction” (the trio and their label, Sub Pop, said they decided to split the body of work into two albums), and the follow-up was intended to be quick. The pandemic delayed the release plans.

“Say the Name” appropriates the lyric “Candlesticks in the dark / visions of bodies bein’ burned” from the 1991 Scarface-penned Geto Boys song “Mind Playin’ Tricks on Me,” with Diggs’ no-words-wasted verses stoking the flames until the song becomes throbbing industrial delirium. It feels as if it could be ripped from today’s headlines.

Elsewhere, the album, Clipping’s fifth, features a collaboration with noise-rappers Ho99o9; a feature by Inglewood twins Cam & China; a track backed by Tortoise guitarist Jeff Parker and improvisational drummer Ted Byrnes; and “Secret Piece,” the album’s the closer. The latter is described as performance of a Yoko Ono text score from 1953 that instructs the players to “Decide on one note that you want to play / Play it with the following accompaniment: the woods from 5am to 8am in summer,” and features nearly all of the musicians who appeared on both albums.

||| Stream: “Say the Name”