Clipse | Plenty of "Fury" — and poetry

"Hell Hath No Fury," the latest album by the high-profile Virginia hip-hop duo Clipse, came three years late, but it was definitely worth the wait.

It is a seething, lyrical workout packed with stark, disorienting beats.

Clipse — brothers Gene (Malice) and Terrence (Pusha-T) Thornton — is recognized for its startling originality by outlets typically unconcerned with hip-hop (The New Yorker, National Public Radio).

"Hell Hath No Fury" has sold poorly, but Clipse remains confident, selling out smaller venues across the nation. The band plays Seattle's Chop Suey Monday and Tuesday.

"This is the best tour I've done," enthuses Pusha, speaking by phone from his tour bus. "It's so intimate, and the fans are so reachable. They're there for you, they understand you, they understand your lyricism ... they feel everything you're going through."

Concert preview


Clipse, 8 p.m. Monday (all ages) and Tuesday (21 and over) at Chop Suey, 1325 E. Madison St., Seattle, $18 (206-324-8000 or

www.chopsuey.com).

That certainly seemed to be the case last month when Clipse, in a semi-secret, invite-only engagement, packed Seattle's Baltic Room with ardent supporters.

"We've toured with 50 Cent, Jay-Z, Nelly ... and that was with a platinum-selling album, but this is different," he said.

Clipse's debut album, "Lord Willin' " (2002), launched the group's career but made bigger stars out of its producers, the Neptunes, who became Grammy-winning hit machines (Justin Timberlake, Gwen Stefani). Their label, Jive, promised the group a second album but put it on the back burner.

Undeterred, the brothers self-released "We Got It 4 Cheap," a mix-tape series, via the Internet.

"The hood isn't really Internet-savvy," says Pusha. "Versus the college kids and suburbia, the hood gets their mix tapes at the corner store, so I think that we diversified our fan base."

Taking cues from Clipse's heavy Internet buzz, Jive released the album that should have come out three years ago.

Clipse has taken a bad rap for its exceedingly violent, cocaine-obsessed lyrical content. But if there's a way to get Clipse wrong, it's to read them as rote, substanceless gangster rap.

The level of craftsmanship that goes into creating their gangster persona outweighs criticisms of what the persona represents. They have a passion for pure poetic style. Skilled at exploiting the suspense of extended rhetorical devices — on "Chinese New Year," they use a "Sesame Street" metaphor — the rappers possess a winning inclination toward the knockout punch.

On the phone, Pusha repeatedly referred to his favorite albums as "movies." The cinematic depth — of the writing and the Neptunes' beats — is intentional. They create a world that is crass, misogynist, hopeless, paranoid, but full of razor-sharp humor that is always honest and in a weird way always fair. It's not an endorsement, but a portrait.

Pusha sees Clipse as returning to old-school values — good rapping with an in-house production team.

"When I was engulfed in the hip-hop I love, I loved the style, the crew, the thoroughness, the whole thing," he says. "These days, rap stars are one-dimensional."

In protest, Clipse has created a strangely addictive, ulterior universe.