Consumer Guide Album

Clipse: Re-Up Gang Records Present: Re-Up Gang: The Saga Continues [BCD, 2008]
The cover copy goes on, too. Not just "Parental Advisory Explicit Lyrics," as in "tickle us pink like white girl's clitoris," but "The Official Mixtape--Remixed & Remastered." That's to let alert consumers infer that it repackages 13 tracks from the first two We Got It 4 Cheap mixtapes, the second of which is longer and on balance better if you can find it. But broad-voiced Re-Up sidekicks and all, this one stands as a chilling introduction to Clipse's nasty little coke-centric world. Even the jacked beats share the Neptunes' efficiency-expert approach to two self-invented moguls Pharrell must sometimes regret he helped off the corner. From the two rappers' clipped flow--Malice killingly precise, Pusha aiming at the same target--to their analytic rhymes, these are two of the least likable guys in hip-hop. I mean, at least Plies is some kind of goon and Fat Joe some kind of glutton. But Clipse's smarts and purity are seductive in the manner of a Jim Thompson novel, even a John Donne meditation: "I'm a warrior, poet laureate, May 13th-born Taurean, cocaine courier/So ahead of my time/Like Back to the Future but minus the DeLorean." A−