Charlie Clips' punch-drunk punchline rap

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Here's what we know about Harlem rapper Charlie Clips, a priori. Like pre-fame Eminem, he's built a formidable battle-rap rep. He's the newest member of the U.N., Cam'ron's post-Diplomats crew, who will have a posse disc out this spring. (Supposedly. Never hold your breath waiting for rap albums to drop.) He rolls with rappers, singers, and producers whose nicknames are as unfortunate as his is, dudes with bargain-basement b-boy handles like Ice Pig, Hash, Amen, Papers, Max Dollaz, Sev Da Producerr, and, um, Fred the Godson. (That last one is especially regrettable; I suspect he'll change it to something less asinine after explaining dozens of times that his moniker either means "God's son" or "god son," as in "You know Ethyl? I'm Ethyl's god son.")

Here's what we learn from Fully Loaded Clips, his new mixtape: he's not known as "Charlie Clips" because he was made employee of the months running at the local Hair Cuttery. (Also, Chuck? If your iPhone starts blowing up soon, it might not be A&Rs, fiends, or chicken heads; legal reps for Malice and Pusha T may want a word.) He's seen Juice way, way too many times, or, at least, he just won't stop talking about it. His boisterous, hammering-tacks-deep-into-every-last-syllable flow snaps and shanks, hyper-kinetic and hungry, laden with
grotesque, black comedic punchlines that he chuckles at (but not in a stoned-hyena Weezy way).

In short, he easily, effortlessly bests every last forgettable, weedcarrying MC to darken the doorway of Cam's last couple albums and mixtapes, and given his sheer intensity and unbound panache, it's sometimes hard to grasp why, say, Ghostface or Juelz Santana -- whose bellicose, belligerant styles Clips must have studied coming up -- aren't his primary mentors. He does share Cam's golden ear for beats, selecting sweet, soulful bangers full of songbird trills he can riff off of; you'll swear you've heard some of these productions before, though you probably haven't. Fully Loaded Clips isn't a fantastic mixtape, or even a great one. It's merely really good. But its lows are tight, and its highs are stratospheric. Here are a handful of them.

06. "Google Flow" feat. Smoke DZA & Hash

The boulevard-flattening beat bounce-splashes doleful piano chords like Spaldings or blood diamonds, and feels like it could fit snugly into the Wu catalog, especially given the drawled, "RAAAAAAW" chorus line; its top-shelf vibe rubs off on the participants. Clips: "I ain't no motherfucking joke, nigga/Nautica, I get my shit off that boat, nigga/Anti-Pepsi, only coke, nigga." Smoke DZA acquits himself better than he did on his rote '09 mixtapes, while Hash enthusiastically if inexplicably spits fire about slinging dope, which is ridiculous. Why? Because his name is Hash.

07. "Counseling"

"Damn, I can tell I need counseling/Shorty got me going crazy, how she keep bouncing it/Condom like a boxing glove, and I keep pounding it," Clips spits over the skeletal sirens-and-boom-baps beat that laces this not-for-the-ladies sex jam. There's a part where he implores his partner in sexual congress to "put on a show, just like the Cosbys" before running through a roll call of characters from The Cosby Show that's random enough to kill the mood under normal coitial circumstances -- or, at least, steer discussion away from grunting and moaning and towards memories of that one episode where Theo wants to run away from home. So don't put this one after "Kelly's 12 Play" on your next "king boot knocka" mix CD.

08. "Talk My Shit"

Now I can sort of see how Cam and Clips might be a good fit for one another; the latter shares the former's prediliction for dropping a given theme to run long with tangents that have little interest in straight logic. On "Talk My Shit," Kool B scares up a splatter-synth Jackson Pollack frozen-mist effect that serves as the perfect backdrop for that sort of cocksure loopiness, as Clips establishes a daisy-chain of dumb/funny gangster punchlines, then deftly exposes the the depths of his video game geekery: "They Grand Theft Auto your ride, soon as your car come/That's your bitch? I control her, R1." Search me; I have no idea what "R1" means. But Clips does, and that shit cracks him up.

13. "Bottom to the Top" feat. Amen

"Sold drugs for the whole night/Reverse the slave trade, master done sold white" might be my favorite rhyme about pushing drugs in a good long while. Later, Clips reaches across green zones and blast craters to embrace the war-torn country of Iraq: "New Iraqi ho, that's my Saddam chick/Oh you don't get it, yo?/Look, that's my bomb bitch." He only gets more sensitive from there -- promise.

23. "Stop"

Best. Rap. Cut. Of 2010 so far, full stop. This is when I love rap, when an MC is loose and out of dome, and the creative juices are getting all over him/her, you, and everyone else. Every verse is an Everest here, one full clip -- no pun, seriously -- busting off after another, relentless, in a quest to innovate and offend in equal, uncontainable measure. Plus, Clips may have put together rap's best yet Martin riff. I'm not even going to quote anything, because you have to hear "Stop" -- and its woozy, cartoon chipmunk soul beat -- to get the full effect.

24. "Kobe and LeBron" feat. Fred the Godson

Busy-bee canned string-section blazes; thundering rock-god guitar riffs on the choruses; exchanges between homies that aren't necessarily profound, but kick up a warm, chummy vibe that'll have you clicking back for a second or third or fifteenth listen nonetheless. Chuck and Freddy (who sounds like a congested Lil Wayne) really need to put their heads together and crank out a buddy-movie mixtape that's just them passing the mike back and forth like this, working up a bristling-yet-amiable tag-team vibe; they could be like the new Meth and Red, but hopefully, you know, more famous.