clipping | nl

clipping. is a Los Angeles, United States rap trio formed in 2010 by William Hutson (Rale), film soundtrack composer Jonathan Snipes (ex-Captain Ahab) and vocalist Daveed Diggs. Lyrically, clipping.’s music attempts to reshuffle and repeat accepted rap scenarios, while eliminating a traditional single-point perspective. Diggs’s writing is heavily citational, like a rough-edged collage, gluing together half-glimpsed images and misremembered references, many of which might feel familiar, and some of which assuredly do not. But even while he consumes and regurgitates established styles, his self-erasure is incomplete; Diggs’s dense, often motormouthed flow remains wholly his own. Individually, the members are known...