Clipse hath no fury

Like Josh, I'm not hearing a masterwork when I play the Clipse's Hell Hath No Fury, despite a half dozen plays. Pharrell's limitations never seem more obvious than when he's propping lame raps with vaporous melodies and attenuated percussion cha-cha-cha, although tracks like "Hello Cruel World" and "Keys Open Doors" redeem their musty tropes. The tragedy here is one in which two young men of obvious intelligence enact coke fantasies but whose ambivalence undercuts their performances; they're too principled to yield to bad faith. Comparing Hell Hath No Fury to Ghostface's superior Fishscale is instructive: Ghost's baroque, allusive, elusive wordplay matches the baroque, allusive music, whereas the spareness of Pharrell's arrangements reveals the poverty of Pusha T and Malice's tough talk.