Dead Channel Sky is the latest studio album from experimental hip-hop trio, Clipping. The group features the rapping talent of Daveed Diggs, famous for his depiction of Thomas Jefferson in the musical Hamilton. Diggs is accompanied by the producing talents of William Hutson and Jonathan Snipes. Clipping has gained extreme notoriety in underground music circles for the last decade or so through their distinctive, dark, and atmospheric production over which Diggs delivers dense, complex and nigh weblike swarms of verses and hooks.
Clipping is a group as well defined by their dedication to chosen aesthetics, their previous studio albums “There Existed an Addiction to Blood” and “Visions of Bodies Being Burned”, drew heavy influence sonically and aesthetically from the underground “horrorcore” scene of Memphis Tennessee perhaps best exemplified by Three Six Mafia.
However, Dead Channel Sky marks a sharp aesthetic shift for the group instead choosing to embrace the world of cyberpunk. Cyberpunk itself being an aesthetic defined by the hyper advancement and corruption thereof of technology as well as deeply anti-consumerist and anti-capitalist messaging, dystopian in its essence. These qualities of cyberpunk are shown incredibly well throughout Dead Channel Sky, this influence is most immediately noticeable in the sonics of the record itself, the beats are glitchy, dark, and heavy sounding as though the record itself has incurred a computer virus.
The title of the record itself is even a reference to what many consider the first major work of cyberpunk literature, Willaim Gibson’s Neuromancer of which the opening passage is “The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.”
This record is decidedly much more than its aesthetic and subcultural dedication though it is a consistently exciting and engrossing listen. These qualities of the record due to the incredible production on display on every track and the complex and masterful rapping of Diggs. The production here often feels as though it reaches deep into the shadiest and corrupted corners of cyberspace in order to concoct a sonic embodiment of the neon-colored grime and virality, pieces that would be great even on their own. Diggs’s rapping may at first feel either overwhelming and complex or seem as though it is nothing more than its speed, technical skill devoid of lyrical value that is all too common with rappers with similarly fast rapping such as Eminem. However, Diggs’s rapping and lyricism is leagues beyond the majority of his contemporaries with complex and intertwined storytelling present throughout the record though even if it may be lost on listeners Diggs’s verses are full of enough clever wordplay and wit that they ought to be studied.
Dead Channel Sky marks a fairly stark shift for Clipping in their sonics and aesthetics though the qualities that have kept them worthy and great throughout the years have remained and shine as bright as they ever have in ways that only generate more excitement for what this group may do in the future. It may not be their absolutely best work but it is a doubtlessly great addition to their catalog and worth a listen for anyone wishing to delve beyond the mainstream of Hip-Hop.
Final Score: 9/10
