I'm debating whether it says "wamp wamp" or "ostrich"
Download – The Clipse feat. Slim Thug – Wamp Wamp (What it Do)
(note: I got this from nahright.com, which becomes a hilarious hip-hop message board free-for-all after every post – this one turned into a discussion of a youtube clip with the top ten dunks on Shawn Bradley – thank God for hip-hop message boards.)
From the forthcoming Hell Hath No Fury full-length, which at this point is known on the street as the Yankee Hotel Foxtrot of rap, which is especially apropos given the Clipse’s affinity for Wilco. “Wamp Wamp” is supposedly the second single, but there’s some talk of Mortarboard P and Bill Gates fightin’ over the beat.
The last album we heard from the Clipse, the We Got it 4 Cheap Vol. 2 mixtape was the first beat-biting contraband (mixtape) to escape the insular sphere of its kind and enter another insular sphere: critical acclaim (Village Voice Blogger fellatio). The funny thing here is how the Clipse claim in Mass Appeal (which I think is mostly a magazine about how graffiti is the coolest thing anyone can possibly do) that they saw no camembert from either WGI4C tape. Indeed, they basically say that those mixtapes did them absolutely no good, no money, no show bookings, only bloglove (which deep down they must really cherish for its purity). I quite like the thing, but mostly because the “One Thing” beat is amazing and I enjoy coke slang that involves flightless birds. But regardless of how much critics or even people that bought it loved it, the Clipse are bringin’ the woman’s scorn for being left in the PCP while errbody else leanin’ rockin’ and whatnot at the mall, at the club and at the used book store.
But back to the Mass Appeal interview, which is by Jon Carmanica, who seems to write for everyone, and got me golling (guffawing out loud--ing) when he quipped in his blog about Papoose doing a response to Jay-Z’s live update of “22 Two’s” (44 Four’s) called “The Prime Number rap (Fuck Fibonacci)” feat. John Abruzzi (math/prison break/rap puns get me every time). Anyway, Caramanica uses the “trap music” taxonomy, qualifies the Clipse brand as “outré” and “arty” (Pusha went to RISD) fails to get Clipse to talk shit on W.F. Baby and Divingboard P, then, referring to the new LP, follows the question “Is it drug shit? Is it emotional shit?” with “Is it hard to temper the lessons with wordplay?” If I were him, I woulda gone into Edward Said’s Marxist reading of Supreme Clientele, but he probably didn’t have much time. Their answer to that last question leads me to believe that Pusha and Malice moonlight as a comedy duo:
P: That’s the part of hip-hop that’s missing. It’s one thing to say ‘I sell bricks, I sell bricks.’ But when you saying, “Trunk like Aspen/Looking like a million muthafuckin crushed aspirins,” dog, we getting back to the colors. A lot of dudes is working with the 8 crayons in the box. They do not have the 64 box, yo. They don’t got “Burnt Sienna” They got red, yellow, blue...
M: They got Roy G. Biv.
As for the track itself, it’s Neptunes produced, and for a second, it made me forget how “Change Clothes” made me want to mash The Black Album with Kathy Griffin stand-up and call it the Newspaper-Riddle Album. Besides a vaguely Eastern synth, it’s all drums: steel ones and what sounds like roto-tom bashing with chop-sticks. Sounds like Hugo and Bullitanboard P are following a music-of-the-world beat cookbook here, but fortunately it’s restrained and drives pretty well. Slim Thug cracks this one, even though he's taking the more-travelled path with all the scenes of equine death, rhyming ‘dro with Mo’. I had no idea what “Wamp Wamp” means, but I’m goin out on a limb and figure it’s synonymous with “ostrich.” Weird drug slang though, so awkward sounding, definitely will get Prez and Freamon curious down at HQ. Pusha and Mal coppin us the fishscale (when in Rome…) wordplay - I’d say the 48 Crayola set here (Ghost has shits outta the visual spectrum btw). Plus we got the casual anti-Semitism, which is a must: “I got the wamp wamp when I move it, it still damp / mildewish, I heat it, it turns glueish, / it glues to a tight wad, the Pyrex is jewish.”
Rating: Franklin Pierce*
*rating system explanation: the deader the president, the better.
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