Favourite clipping. tracks

Published 2025-07-23, updated 2025-07-23

I’ve been quite enjoying the experimental Hip Hop group clipping. for a while now. Also classified as noise core, they can be a bit difficult to get into, but I think it’s worth it to give them a shot.

I’m not a Hamilton guy so I didn’t realize this until recently, but clipping.'s rapper, Daveed Diggs, played Marquis de Lafayette and Thomas Jefferson in the original production.

The first song I got into was The Deep, so I’ll start there. It’s also a pretty approachable one. I was going to summarize the story it tells, but I’ll just quote the beginning of the track instead:

Our mothers were pregnant African women thrown overboard while crossing the Atlantic Ocean on slave ships.
We were born breathing water as we did in the womb.
We built our home on the sea floor, unaware of the two-legged surface dwellers until their world came to destroy ours.
With cannons, they searched for oil beneath our cities. Their greed and recklessness forced our uprising.

That’s right — afrofuturism meets mermaids. Excellent, right?

This track is awesome. Besides the story, I love how it speeds up in increments as the story builds. And there are some excellent lines:

And all the fishes had they eyes bugged out
'Cause y’all dancing underwater and y’all don’t get wet

There’s also this:

Ya’ll remember saying how it couldn’t be them two legs
'cause y’all came from two legs
And y’all mamas would’ve loved y’all
If they could’ve breathed
But they wasn’t ready for the deep

Which is just a commentary on human history and conflict: why do we keep hurting and oppressing each other when we all come from the same people?