![]() ![]() By now, the Neptunes have made enough money to keep their ho’s hos in designer skin. Any jackass can makes lots of money, attract lots of gold diggers, and then rap about it. Audre Lord once said that “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.” I’m pretty sure that also applies to actually buying the master’s house. Still, I’m tempted to believe that even their fuck-ups are more interesting than most pop records, especially those by some of the artists they include here.Īs production pioneers delivering beat commandments to the masses, you’d think they’d also want to bring them some of hip-hop and pop music’s most interesting and talented artists, all of whom are achingly absent here. Even a successful formula can leave listeners cold when heartlessly abused or, in the case of Clones, shamelessly coasted upon. There are some really terrible songs on this album that no amount of angular clack zagging will save. At one point, I swear to you that I heard a Boston riff, which is about as welcome as hearing a dead body hit your hit your bedroom window. I can admire the genre free-for-all of a band like Spymob, but they ultimately leave a muddied and irritating aftertaste, like taking Ben Folds Five and having Liam Gallagher sing for them. In fact, on a song that’s supposed to have some kind of raw, punk edge, “Fuck n’ Spend” sounds like a shiny, white bone sucked clean of its meat. On songs outside of hip-hop, there’s nothing particularly compelling about the way they produce. The High Speed Scene contributes a lip-glossed bubble-punk throwaway, with the slightly redeeming grace of a funny chorus (“Fuck, Fuck, Spend Money”). Vanessa Marquez’s “Good Girl” sounds like an old Jody Watley b-side, full of cheap synth slabs, painfully thin vocals, and a beat that’s not much more than a tepid golf clap. ![]() Jay-Z makes a cameo on “Frontin'” that’s more like a pin drop, slinging his usual half-assed flow (rhymin’ are with are) and lines that would sound better if he just read change-of-address forms. Sadly, it’s impossible not to notice that a good half or more of this album is for shit. ![]() Even Nelly, who we last heard from when he decided to write a song about his shoes, brings a wild, auctioneering flow to “If”, a song that slowly plays tinkling jazz keyboard against a bullet-paced drumbeat. Unsurprisingly, Kelis and Nas (one of the few people on this record who can lyrically torch his way through a track) contribute far and away the best effort with “Popular Thug”, a slinky little song with snippets of hooka horn built around a beat that sounds like a scratched CD skipping. Jamaican dancehall legend Super Cat chimes in over a grinding pogo vault of a backdrop on “The Don of Dons”, replete with Jadakiss growling and what sounds like a baby rattle bringing up the rear. On “It Wasn’t Us”, with Ludacris on the mic, bike bells, coffee can percussion, firing rockets, zooming cars, and random screams blip by the background and provide necessary side roads to the beat. Many of the songs are populated with drive-by cartoon noises, bionic sounds, or a firing range of intergalactic weaponry. Not to mention the track’s smooth threat of a chorus: “I’m Da Vinci, don’t make me draw your pain”. Coldchain’s “Hot” is a minimal masterpiece, with sludge-warped turntabling that sounds like a pair of rubbing corduroys hooked up to an amp. When Clones does its duty, the results are like having lightning snare kicked into your veins. The result is an uneven album with moments of thunderous fun and more than a few flatlined missteps. Clones is essentially a mixtape of like-minded grooves, a revolving lineup of side projects and pop-rap superstars submitting to the hump-thumping vision of Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo. Given their somewhat shoddy taste in collaboration, this is always a godsend. Frequently, the overriding beat erases the necessity of paying attention to the words or the person singing. The beats are simple, tactile and instantly demand a head nod, an ass shake, and an almost demonic surrender. You can recognize a Neptunes track by the way that the song’s bones are lifted to the surface and pounded out like a giant’s footfalls. Like hip-hop auteur, Timbaland, once the Neptunes have laid healing hands on a song, it’s indisputably their own. Let me first get out of the way how incredible I think the Neptunes are. ![]()
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