clipping. - CLPPNG [2LP]

Noise, found sound and pure nerve power CLPPNG, the record where clipping. bent hip-hop into strange new shapes, spread here across two LPs with a digital download card included.

The Los Angeles trio of rapper Daveed Diggs and producers William Hutson and Jonathan Snipes made their Sub Pop debut with this album in 2014, a year before Diggs became a Broadway name in Hamilton. Their approach was simple and slightly mad: take the structures of mainstream rap seriously, then rebuild the beats from harsh electronics, field recordings and avant-garde experiments.

"Work Work", featuring Cocc Pistol Cree, is as close to a club track as they get, while "Tonight" brings in Memphis legend Gangsta Boo and twists a party song into something uneasy. "Story 2" shows off Diggs' breathless, cinematic storytelling, and "Williams Mix" tips its hat to John Cage's tape-collage piece of the same name.

Diggs raps with machine-gun precision and a novelist's eye for detail, and the production treats every sound as a possible rhythm, from clattering static to the sudden silence between bars. It is confrontational, but there is a sly sense of humor running underneath.

Abrasive and oddly catchy in equal measure, CLPPNG is proof that experimental rap can still hit like a body blow.