Let the Church say “Yugh!”
Friday, July 11, marks the drop of Let God Type Em Out, the long-awaited new album from Clipse, our favourite brotherly rap duo from Virginia Seaside (757 REPRESENT!) and the undisputed pen-wielding philosophers of powdery prosperity.
To be clear, this isn’t just a few album launch. For Black males over 40, that is our Cowboy Carter. It’s our Renaissance. That is the second we’ve been holding out for now for over a decade. It’s our alternative to really feel understood, heard, and possibly even redeemed by way of 16 tracks of elegantly constructed road soliloquies about issues we could or could not have accomplished, dreamed about doing, or just watched occur from the security of a entrance stoop or bed room window.
And whereas your most well-liked music streaming platform might be pushing you towards songs made for TikTok dances, marriage ceremony montages, or inspirational fitness center reels, Coke Rap isn’t fascinated about choreography or virality. It’s about narrative. It’s about reminiscence. It’s about survival. And no person does that higher than Clipse.
Earlier than we go any additional, what’s “Coke Rap,” precisely?
For the uninitiated, Coke Rap isn’t just a subgenre; it’s a cinematic universe. It’s rap music that explores the hustle, the high-stakes calculus of road life, and the gritty poetry of the drug recreation with nuance, complexity, and a sure… aspirational gloss.
It’s the hip-hop equal of a Scorsese movie. If entice music is fashionable blues from the road nook, Coke Rap is the sport in an opera. It’s layered, introspective, and meticulously detailed. Suppose much less “I obtained bricks within the trunk” and extra “In 2004, I wore a white mink in entrance of customs and didn’t flinch.”
It’s what occurs when drug dealing turns into artwork, filtered by way of metaphor, confession, and craftsmanship. It’s elevated storytelling, not only a glamorized justification for poor decision-making.
However we’ve to begin with the blueprint: Raekwon and the Purple Tape…
We are able to’t discuss Coke Rap with out invoking the godfather: Raekwon the Chef. When he dropped Solely Constructed 4 Cuban Linx… in 1995 (IYKYK, “The Purple Tape”), it modified the sport.
Up till then, drug rap had been uncooked, cautionary, and aggressive, designed to both scare you straight or make you suppose twice. Suppose Kool G. Rap, “Highway To The Riches” or Ice T’s, “Excessive Rollers.” However Rae took it in a brand new course. He made it fashionable. He gave it construction. He gave it a vocabulary formed by a milieu.
Cuban Linx performed like a rap epic: Ghostface was the co-star, RZA did the rating, and Rae was each the narrator and protagonist. It wasn’t about glorifying the sport; it was about creating an area to think about what it may have seemed like if it wasn’t rigged and the gamers really received. All interspersed with strains from Scarface and Kung Fu dubs, punctuating the motion.
He laid the inspiration for The Lox, Beanie Sigel, and Cam’ron. Later got here Freddie Gibbs, Benny the Butcher, and Boldy James. Every added their very own elements to the pot. However it was Clipse who turned the Pyrex right into a positive eating expertise.
When “Grindin’” dropped in 2002, it didn’t sound like anything. The beat felt like Neptunes-made Morse code banged out on a highschool cafeteria desk. Pusha T and Malice didn’t simply rap, they reported. It challenged you to disregard it.
The place others yelled, they spoke in monotones. The place others flexed, they measured. And the place others offered a way of life, they offered the implications.
Clipse wasn’t simply narrating the hustle; they had been theologians of it. They explored the paradox of ambition, the skinny line between survival and sin. They opined on the best way America criminalizes your choices, then punishes your outcomes. They usually did all of it whereas balancing tall tees with couture and referencing obscure French champagne vintages.
To place it plainly: Jay-Z offered medicine and advised you about it as an outsider. Clipse offered medicine and made you are feeling such as you had been within the backseat of a 1992 Acura Legend on 18-inch Hammers whereas it was taking place.
And now, with Let God Type Em Out, they’re again. Not simply to remind us how sharp their bars are, however to remind us of a style, a technology, and a geography of reminiscence that wants revisiting.
As a result of for those who’re a middle-aged Black man, it is a cultural touchstone.
To know the enchantment of Coke Rap, you need to perceive what the Conflict on Medicine and the Crack Period did to Black communities, and Black boys of that technology particularly.
We got here of age throughout a time when the struggle on medicine was a struggle on us. When the heroes on TV didn’t seem like us, and the so-called villains all too typically resembled individuals who lived down the block. When the longer term felt unsure, and choices felt compartmentalized.
Coke Rap offers us the power to reimagine that previous. To take these dusty corners and damaged desires and repurpose them into artwork, mythology, and, dare I say, vanity.
It’s not about glorification. It’s about reclamation.
White males have had the Western for over a century, the place they obtained to shoot first, rewrite historical past, and journey off into the sundown as heroes, irrespective of how messy their morals had been. Conquest and extermination had been sanitized and glamorized. Individuals who actively participated in very dangerous issues obtained to be introduced as excellent guys, their villainy obscured by rewritten valor. The ethnic cleaning of America was reimagined as a folks story.
Coke Rap is our Western. However as a substitute of horses and stagecoaches, it’s Crown Vics and Mazda MPVs. As an alternative of saloons, it’s nook shops. As an alternative of placing gold, it’s reaching a key. Everyone will get away with it. No person will get shot. No person goes to jail. And all of us stay full and comfortable lives with out ever worrying concerning the cops.
Via Coke Rap, we get to grow to be the protagonists of our tales, not cautionary tales, not supporting characters. Not stereotypes, tropes, or one-dimensional caricatures of individuals society thought deserved to be stopped and frisked.
Simply difficult males present process difficult conditions, making an attempt to make it and make it make sense.
Let me be clear: this music hits completely different when folks. When the lyrics really feel like they may’ve been your cousin’s diary or your brother’s confession, the proximity offers it its energy.
All of us knew a dude who was sensible sufficient to be a lawyer however hit the nook as a substitute. Not as a result of he was a nasty particular person, however as a result of he was raised in a spot the place regulation faculty didn’t really feel like an possibility. His attain was restricted by a slim imaginative and prescient created by a Reagan period that was obsessive about the wealth of some, predicated on eliminating alternatives for the numerous.
Coke Rap doesn’t ignore that complexity. It lives in it. It’s steeped in that uncomfortable actuality. It doesn’t disguise from the disgusting irony that their success may solely occur by way of the destruction of others.
It says: “You won’t have appreciated my decisions, however you’re gonna respect the calculus.” It invitations empathy, not for the crime, however for the situations. No person’s fingers are clear and all of the members are equal components predator and prey.
And that’s why this album resonates a lot on this explicit second.
The Trump Period and the Reagan days don’t really feel so completely different.
I imply, our views have modified with time, however the situations persist.
Positive, we’re in our 40s now. We’re elevating youngsters. We’re managing blood strain. We’ve switched from Crown Royal to purple wine and began taking a look at how a lot sugar is in that jar of spaghetti sauce (trace: A LOT).
However that doesn’t imply we forgot.
Let God Type Em Out arrives like a time capsule. It reminds us that we made it by way of. That we had been there. Even when confronted by this contemporary iteration, we’re genetically predisposed to outlive. And that our tales matter.
And in contrast to TikTok songs designed for 30-second dances, Clipse offers us compositions that breathe. That sit with you. That develop with age.
When Push speaks on household.
When Malice speaks on religion.
This album isn’t for the charts, it’s for the barbershop convos, the solo automobile rides, the late-night recitations as a proverb to a youthful man who wants some steerage. It’s for that second once you catch a line so good it makes you pause the observe and shake your head in disbelief, after which ponder how that pertains to your divorce or your relationship along with your kids.
We was there. And now, we right here.
Some males take heed to traditional rock. Some rewatch The Sopranos on repeat. We play Coke Rap.
We bear in mind who we had been, who we may’ve been, and the way shut a few of us got here to not being right here in any respect. The soundtrack helps us course of that. It offers us house to mourn, to marvel, and to maneuver ahead.
We weren’t imagined to make it. However we did. And now, after such an extended pause, we get to journey out to grown-man music that respects that journey once more.
So sure, it’s Clipse Day. And sure, the album is named Let God Type Em Out. However what it actually represents is that this: our likelihood to reclaim the tales we lived by way of with dignity, humor, and lyrical precision.
As a result of if America will get to mythologize cowboys and Confederates, we get to have fun the boys who made it out the opposite aspect of our nationwide nightmare, and did so with punchlines, Prada, and simply sufficient ache to make it stick.
Merry Clipsemas, fellas!
Corey Richardson is initially from Newport Information, Va., and at present lives in Chicago, Sick. Advert man by commerce, Dad man in life, and grilled meat fanatic, Corey spends his time crafting phrases, cheering on beleaguered Washington DC sports activities franchises, and yelling obscenities at himself on golf programs. Because the founding father of The Instigation Division, you possibly can comply with him on Substack to maintain up along with his work.
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