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Artist: The Neptunes
Title: The Neptunes Present Clones
Year Of Release: 2003
Record Label: Star Trak
Overall Rating: 7/10
1 For the past 2 years, I've been well aware of The Neptunes - Pharrell's work in particular - yet this is the first non-mixtape joint that I have actually been allured into buying. The hype surrounding this album at the moment is incredible, so in a peculiar turn of events I went out and bought a brand new, chart album. This is so rare for me, as most of the music I buy is either non-chart or non-recent. Since I still have a whole load of 'classic' albums yet to cop, current Hip-Hop affairs occasionally pass me by. Fortunately though, I have copped a few decent 2003 albums, 'Clones' being one of them…
The intro to the album is exactly what I'd expected - short & sweet, yet still musically attractive. The only vocals on the track are computerised countdown effects and the whispered, alluring name-drop of 'Clones'. The second track holds a beautiful, albeit slightly monotonous beat, consisting of simple yet effective 'taps' and 'beeps'. Nice work from Pharrell and Chad, but unfortunately Busta Rhymes, the first emcee to be given the blessing of a spot on 'Clones' can't rock the beat. I've never really dug Busta's style, but over a hyped, up-tempo beat, spitting his unique quickfire shit, he can work wonders. His delivery seems to be the problem here, as Busta has to slow his style down a little and drop lyrics at an usually sensibly-paced tempo. Judging by the title, 'Light Ya Ass On Fire', I was expecting a beef-like 'don't f**k with me' joint. However, the song is a 'booty' track, paying homage to a sexy female. All is good apart from the fact that the thought of Busta getting a woman hot sickens me. The saviour to the track is Pharrell's catchy chorus, 'Move girl, like ya ass [is] on fire…I'll light ya ass on fire…'. On the Busta front however, his usually nonsensical lyrics end up coming across as plain silly: 'I bet ya need a tablecloth to cover ya ass…'. Whatever, Busta, you have managed to make this track live up to its title; as it is ass.
Fortunately, things pick up a lot upon the intro of the excellent Clipse joint 'Blaze Of Glory'. As usual, Clipse rock the Neptunes' beat like it was their second home. The beat is hyped and excitable, utilising sound effects which smack of horns and trombones. As usual with Clipse, the state of Virginia lands right into our living rooms via the medium of Pusha-T and Malice, taking nonchalant hits at everyone from critics to 'fake niggas'. The repetitive chorus 'It's the Blaze Of Glory, The Blaze Of Glory, you comin' here for me, niggas, The Blaze Of Glory…' is one of the catchiest and most attractive moments of the whole piece, which makes this album so rockable and addictive. Adding a more aggressive input to the joint is Ab-Liva, describing his own trials and tribulations in a more rowdy, yet equally dope fashion as Clipse. In a struggle to put his point across over the highly listenable and possibly distracting beat, Ab-Liva creates a hardship-esque feel with his lines '…Sometimes no electric/ It was hectic/ It was hard/ I was odd/ I was affected, neglected…'. Such an ill concept to incorporate into such an upbeat feeling joint. Nice work, guys.
In my opinion, track 4 again brings a temporarily slump to the album. 'It Wasn't Us (Remix)', by Ludacris, is undeniably tight, yet Luda is another emcee whom I don't really feel unless the track is perfect. Also, I'm of the opinion that, like Busta, Luda is incompatible with The Neptunes' production. The beat is - as usual - highly addictive and head-nod inducing. One of the more excitable tracks on the album, the beat borrows from carnival/circus-sounding samples in order to create its effect. I don't understand why The Neptunes even touched this track, since the original was far more superior, and represented Luda's original flow in a much better light. Whilst this beat is ill, at times it seems so overpowering that Luda's presence (and actual voice) is overshadowed. My second slight disappointment on the album is alleviated upon hearing the oh-so-chart-friendly 'Frontin'', on which Pharrell croons his heart out, telling tales of confessing to acting cool and putting on a front in the presence of a girl whom he actually likes. Jay-Z makes an appearance and reiterates Pharrell's sentiments in his usual amusing and witty manner. Lines like 'Every time your name was brought up, I would act all nonchalant/ In front of an audience/ Like you was just another shorty I put the naughty on…' make the average listener smile and revel, whilst the lyrics also serve to re-tell any aspects of the tale that might have been missed amidst Pharrell's weird 'singing'.
Strangely enough, the next two tracks fail to live up to the excellence of the R'n'B banger 'Frontin''. From an album by The Neptunes, I fully expected there to be a wide range of artists, and a fair proportion of more R'n'B-orientated tracks. I was not, however, ready for the awfulness that is Vanessa Marquez. Her meandering and sugar-coated lyrics completely abuse and violate the otherwise salvageable Neptunes' beat. I'm surprised that 'Good Girl' even made the final cut. Since Ms Varquez is the only notable female personality on the album, one would think that she was either coached into wrting a listenable joint, or was completely dropped from the project. Nor was I ready for Nelly…'If' is a strange and familiar-sounding attempt at a love song, drawing on all too well-known lines from the NSYNC hit 'Girlfriend', utilising the '…Won't you be my girl?…' hook. Despite the beat being one of the most experimental and psychedelic joints on the album, the song still manages to sound like what should be the Nelly solo version of the aforementioned NSYNC track.
However, upon hearing the next 2 tracks, I went from thinking that 'Good Girl' and 'If' ruined the album, to the optimistic train of thought that they can easily be missed out of the playlist by using the 'program' function on my stereo. 'Hot', by Rosco P. Coldchain featuring Pusha -T and Boo-Bonic, is easily amongst the top 3 tracks on this album,and has probably had 30+ plays in the short 3 days I've owned this album. The beat is one which would be dubbed universally ill, due to it's hard, 'sweeping' effect and the fact that its arrangement is outstandingly simple yet amazingly hot. The track kicks in with the ice-cold chorus from Mr. P. Coldchain himself, making his mark for the benefit of those who may not have witnessed his skill yet. 'Sco's input is sensational, using funny, yet seemingly sincere metaphors such as "Y'all niggas ain't got a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of…". I can see his album being copped in mass amounts in the near future, and quite rightly too. 18 tracks as good as 'Hot' would have made 'Clones' a stone-cold classic album. Track 9 is a familiar, yet never tiresome, track from the G himself, Snoop Dogg, featuring Pharrell. 'It Blows My Mind' has been doing its rounds on mixtapes for the past few months, yet nothing inhibits its excellence of being the perfect track to follow 'Hot'. It's upbeat bassline contrasts sharply to 'Hot', yet hits the spot, serving as the backdrop for Snoop's favourite topic: chronic talk. Pharrell's consistent and breathy hollers of 'The chronic's blowing…the chronic's blowing…' completely discredit the not-so-distant utterances from Snoop Dogg that he was to quit smoking. But with a track this 'smoking', who cares about his sincerity anyway?
Now, I'm sure Pharrell and Chad didn't intend to be spolisports when they included tracks 10 & 11 in the final cut, but why the f**k they have slotted two pop-punk tracks right into the middle of this Hip-Hop/R'n'B album is beyond me…The songs 'Half Steering' and 'F**k 'N' Spend' are decent in their own right, I suppose, but I also reckon that the average Hip-Hop head (particularly beat junkies) weren't quite expecting or hoping for the Neptunes to exhibit proof of their occasional 'rock' dabblings. As a consumer, I would've appreciated for these songs to be more highly publicised before I bought the album. But hey, from what I can gather, The Neptunes' key to success is their unpredictability and their penchant for genre-crossing. This high school-esque 'Punk' feel is even carried over to the catchy and far superior track 'Loser', featuring N*E*R*D* and Clipse. Now, those expecting an angsty track will be disappointed, as the joint actually serves only for the featured artists to give mad props to themselves. Still, as vanity tracks go, it's worth checking out, even if only for the catchy, eerie hook "We will not be the losers…We won't leave 'till our job is done…". The beat is how rock influences should sound on a modern Hip-Hop album, and the low-profile guitar-licked bassline creates an interesting result, particularly as far as Clipse's lyrics are concerned.
The oddly named 'Rock 'N' Roll' doesn't do exactly what the title implies, as a rock influenced track would again be expected at this point in the album, following the feel of the previous 3 songs. Track 13, however, is Fam-Lay describing 'Rock 'N' Roll' within, and part of, the concept of hustling drug sales on the street. The track exhibits simple lyricism -- as does much of the album -- but the straight-up attitude and rowdiness of this joint, kicked over a relatively tame beat, spells success for Fam-Lay. The way in which most of the lines follow the straight-laced rhyming couplet format makes most of the track sound like one long, but not monotonous, chorus. Usually, my listening tastes would detect the banality of such a style, yet The Neptunes' Midas touch and the wannabe hustlers' dream-esque content formulates a winner, and final alleviation from the weirder, more experimental side of the album exhibited in tracks 10 & 11.
Shamefacedly, I will now fully admit that I have ended up skipping track 14 after 30 seconds each time I try to listen to it. The reason being that Dancehall music lacks something that my musical taste craves. I don't quite 'get' the music, and despite Super Cat's efforts, 'Don Of All Dons' fails to engage my interest whatsoever. By most accounts, the highlight of the track is Jadakiss' hot (albeit not completely song-redeeming) verse, as it also creates an interesting pairing and a spot of genre-fusing. Track 15 again provides a moment of relief from the more dodgy spots of the album. 'Hot Damn' sees the albums biggest players Clipse, Pharrell, Ab-Liva & Rosco P. Coldchain hook of for straight lyrical onslaught, over a horn-induced Southern feeling beat, again reminiscent of the claims of hotness in the title. The Clipse once again revive the lazy flow popular in the late 90s and make it bigger and hotter than ever. My only gripe with this track is its positioning on the album. Everyone knows that the last few tracks of an album should be filler-song storage (if we are unfortunate to hear any filler garbage, that is). This song would have slotted in perfectly between 'Hot' and 'It Blows My Mind'. Maybe The Neptunes figured that a Clipse/Ab-Liva/Coldchain overload would be a no-no. Well...they thought wrong.
Track 16 sees the re-teaming of recent collaborates N.O.R.E. and Pharrell and offers yet another hot joint which could might well be obscured by the album's midway slump. In a similar fashion to 'Hot Damn, 'Put 'Em Up' again calls upon a bouncy, springy, krunked-up, rowdy beat, over which Pharrell intros with the mandatory claims of pimp-dom. In his newly-found upbeat manner, N.O.R.E. begins to ride the beat, bigging himself up in the process with the useage of female ad-libs stating 'It's Nore, Nore!'. With lyrics like 'I was chillin' with a shorty/ Drinkin' on a 40...', the track soon becomes party fodder, with a twist of dopeness maintained through Pharrell and N.O.R.E.'s obvious musical chemistry. In an odd turn of events, track 17 offers the newly-named, fresh from rehab O.D.B., under his 'interesting' new alias of Dirt McGirt. 'Pop Shit' is undoubtedly a dope track, with O.D.B, sorry, 'Dirt', wailing 'Guess who's home, guess who's home...' over an excitable beat. However, a slight flaw in the track is the fact that it IS a pop track...Still, O.D.B.'s hardcore and truly f**king crazy flow exhibited over such an upbeat bassline makes for essential, and surprisingly pleasurable, listening.
The album concludes with the increasingly popular track 'Popular Thug', a collaboration between the high-profile couple Nas and Kelis. Personally, I've always found Kelis very weird and trippy, and at times even unlistenable. However, her vocals are for once tolerable, due to the up-tempo Neptunes beat and the catchy lyrics 'I would never have talked to you, if I'd have known you was a popular thug...'. Annoyingly, Nas seems it fit to cut in with 'Ya damn right' at the end of each aforementioned line. Speaking of Nas, even in light of my recent hatred for the man, his lyrics seem a lot less aloof and serious than usual, again due to the hot beat. If Nas could work like this all the time, dropping looser lyrics occasionally and actually coming across like he's enjoying rocking the beat, he would still be hot. Not an amazing track as such, but a nice outro and certainly worthy of a spot on this often excellent Neptunes album.
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