Starting late is never easy for an artist or the audience. With a scheduled performance time of 8:15, Clipping, a noise rap group from California, ended up starting at 9, and had to make the most of the intermission, which they did so by making a simple joke. But the only way to understand what made their simple joke of, “Thank you, we’re clipping.,” funny, is to understand Clipping.
Clipping, stylized as “clipping.”, is a noise rap group. What exactly is a noise rap group? Imagine spoken word poetry. Now imagine if it was fast with a song-like structure of verses, choruses, and occasionally bridges. Now put random noise, static, bells, weird melodies, and a beat behind it. That is noise rap; that is Clipping.
Because of the uniqueness of the genre, Clipping is quite literally a “have-to-see” band: more emotion, smoother flow, and sharper dynamics encompass their live show, and audience interaction, cool visuals, and fast rhymes weave through each song. Believe it or not, the songs become catchier and more fluent when heard live rather than through Youtube or iTunes. The experience of a small venue might have contributed, but the packed audience did not stop MC DD from taking a song into the crowd, spitting rhymes in between fans. And all while MC DD is rapping, the noise is playing behind him.
The noise is trebly and loud unless it is mixed properly, and even with earplugs, it is ear-shattering. When a band starts their sound check, nothing is EQ’d, no volumes are set, and no one is prepared with their ear protection. When Clipping started their soundcheck (45 minutes before their set), their trebly noise was the last thing to be set. After piercing everyone’s ears, Clipping decided to make good humor of their unfortunate delay by cracking one little joke, “Thank you, we’re clipping!” And with potentially bleeding ears, but still in good spirits, everyone waited patiently for the show to start.