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Clipse: Hell Freezes Over :: After four years of waiting. . .and waiting, Clipse finally deliver the fix hip-hop's been waiting for

By J. Paul   Photography by Jordan Hollender

03/28/07 :: URB 141

As one-half of the coke-centric rap duo Clipse, Gene "Malice" Thornton is not someone most people would look to for parental advice. This is a guy known for lines like "Got love for guns and 'caine, let nothing come between us/You mistook me for a rapper, huh?/Well that makes me an actor cause I would rather clap a gun," and from whom even the most innocuous-sounding line is often a disguised reference to cooking up the powdery white. But, as the 33-year-old MC begins talking about his kids, ages 14 and 10, a few things about the Clipse come into perspective. 

"I have no problem with my kids listening to what we do because I talk with my kids," Malice says. "Even watching TV with my daughter, I won't say 'Don't watch that' but I'll make sure she understands what she's seeing. I make sure she knows you can't be like these girls on MTV out there in the world. I tell her 'You know what would really happen to a girl like that?'"

It's that inclination to show all sides of the coin that separates Malice and his younger brother, Terrence- better known as Pusha T-from the rest of rap's current  pack, and makes them the one group of dealers-turned-MCs it might not hurt to let the kids listen to. 

"There's no way you can listen to these verses and say all you hear is coke," Malice explains. "There's so  much food for thought within them. It's not just 'coke  this, brick in the trunk that.' We tell you the ramifica-tions. We're not just gonna paint the winning side, we're  painting the full spectrum."

Products of the same turf that spawned such crossover-friendly acts as Timbaland, Missy Elliott and The  Neptunes, Virginia Beach's hardcore delegates wouldn't  have always stood out so much. Kool G. Rap and, later,  Notorious B.I.G. brought their listeners into a world where the life of a drug dealer was just as terrifying as  it was alluring, just as dangerous as it was rewarding. Raekwon (Only Built 4 Cuban Linx) and Jay-Z (Reasonable Doubt) made two of the best rap albums ever, covering almost nothing but the intricate details  behind moving coke through the streets. But, sometime  after the release of Clipse's 2002 LP, Lord Willin' (their  debut album, 1998's permanently shelved Exclusive Audio Footage notwithstanding) and their breakthrough  single "Grindin'," "crack" and "trap" became buzz-words. The crack trade-which has actually declined greatly in recent years-became topic numero uno for any rapper looking to gain traction, and earn credibility among hip-hop's core street audience. But, as Pusha T has taken to pointing out recently in an analogy referencing Crayola crayons, these rappers haven't bothered to cop "the box of 64." 

"Hip-hop as we know it was about being as vivid as can be, whether you were conscious, whether you were doing street shit, or whether you were rapping about women like LL," says the 28-year-old Pusha. "(But) these guys today come one-dimensional with this whole shit. They comin' with the motherfuckin' box of eight [crayons]. Nobody wants that. You couldn't even go to school with the box of eight. You'd get laughed right out of art!"

In this underwhelming climate, Clipse verses have become like crack, if you will, for heads who were raised on Ready To Die and Cuban Linx but find little food for thought in today's hustle talk. Look at the success of 2005's We Got It 4 Cheap mixtapes. After nearly three years on the sidelines, We Got It 4 Cheap Vol. 2 found Pusha and Malice, along with Re-Up Gang fam Ab-Liva and Sandman, one-upping all the moment's top rappers-The Game, Juelz, Cassidy-over their own beats, and garnering more critical acclaim than nearly every damn rap album in 2005. With that sort of hype, it seemed things could only go up. But, waiting for the new Clipse album, Hell Hath No Fury, to see the light of day continues to feel like waiting for hell to freeze over.