spirit of competition

lest you think I've been doing nothing but lying around weakly listening to ethereal girly ambient music and melodramatic new agey Lynch soundtracks these days - which is definitely mostly true - after dark the soundtrack is generally switching back to the hard-as-fuck new Clipse, which, predictably, is great and getting better with every listen. I can hear jaded friends and bloggers etc saying 'oh it's not as exciting as vol. 1 and 2' and 'the beats aren't as good' etc but I am definitely into and definitely feeling the deepening notes of grimness, determination, and increasingly insular hatred of just about everybody else. this is motivational music, in other words. notes and zshares -

- so yeah, new emotional vibes, also more depressed and disillusioned esp Malice - see Breihan's accurate vibe-reading

- also, relatedly, more just really fucking ANGRY - the dominant vibe is still ice cold, but there are these terrifying interludes on the exhilirating "re-up intro" and "show you how to hustle" where they just fucking yell at you through this megaphone-style distortion, you can really hear their eyes popping with rage, "lookin down at you and with the conviction of God almighty / telling you your crew ain't shit, that's right!!! your crew ain't shit!!!!" , sneering megalomania, "you see it's the natural instinct of man to have this competitive drive!!! to want to be the ELITE"

- the screaming vitriol over the previously mellow Pharrell solo joint "hustle" is utterly sick and kind of a mindfuck besides given their apparent bitterness towards him

re-up - show you how to hustle

- "haters try to block the shine like the clouds / but I Will Wallace scream "freedom" through the crowd" !!!

- seriously one of the best and most insanely balanced rap crews ever, the awesome symmetry and complementarity of the two short, nasally needling Clipsebros alternating with the two gravelly-soft giants of Sand and Liva kind of reminds me in a weird way of ZS in the old days where they had two sax players, two guitarists, and two drummers, and they each sat across from each other and had similar haircuts. everyone fucking brings it on Roc Boys no doubt but check out fucking Sand killing that last verse!

re-up - roc boys

- "ski for all / I said ski for all / Sonny Bono the slopes until the reaper calls" !!!

- so awesome to see these guys totally fucking own Dey Know, and so satisfying to hear this sick beat really done heavy justice to. also, so illustrative to compare it to Wayne's verse on the mostly-shitty remix with Luda, Jeezy, etc, where he audaciously and brilliantly uses auto-tune for, sorrrrry, typical Weezyish free associative rambling bullshit and poop jokes. Sand kind of owns this one too, no?

re-up - dey know yayo