The Clipse : There’s no Business Like Snow Business

Here is an old interview I had done with The Clipse brothers early last year for the now defunct online journal Daily Value.
Brings up incredibly fun memories of CiRCA pre-douche bags and HWY 403 dance remixes.



The Clipse : There’s no Business Like Snow Business
Interview by Kiwi Mohamed

Two a.m. on a Saturday morning, teeny tape recorder in hand I found my self hiding behind a dark corner of grey stucco wall.  As a child of the night, this base filled night club was my dangerous little play ground, and I was about to exploit its secrets for a moment with Dope Raps finest. Known most commonly for their collaborations with The Neptunes, hip-hop duo, Clipse, were the princes of mix tapes. Three knocks, two pissed security guards and one secret door later, I managed to catch up with the Virginia-based brothers backstage after their much-anticipated set at CiRCA.

Kiwi Mohamed: Within hip hop as a genre and culture, is there an excessive amount of animosity directed towards the both you?

Malice: We think that there is a lot of stupid shit going on, shit that I don’t even care to get in to. We basically are music, and what we write about. We try to not get caught up in the circus of what is going on around us.

KM: Would you agree that the problem with hip hop is that there is far too much animosity between artists?

Malice: I think in hip hop a lot of people are acting, and they feel like there is a lot of thug shit that they gotta live up too and whole bunch of (other) unnecessary nonsense, basically with us it’s about our business.

KM: How do you come up with your rhymes? Is it a process you do separately or together?

Pusha T: Yeah, definitely we do our things separately and then we come together. We get the theme together and then we do what we got to do.

KM: As siblings do you find it easier working together. Is it more natural?

P: We basically stay in concert; we know what it is we have to do. We can’t come with nothing lack luster; you know what I’m saying. We got to raise the bar every time and we basically come from the same school so we know each other, and we know what is expected of the Clipse.

KM: So, Mr. Me Too. Who is it about and why?

M: It’s about the street. It’s not about nobody in particular. It’s about the street; it’s basically about cats copying.
You know we were on hiatus, for like four years. When we were out we got all this criticism about dope rap and everything that we were talking about. And when we stepped out for the four years, everybody else was doing exactly what we were getting criticized for.

KM: Do you feel like there is more pressure now that you’ve come back?

P: When you get pull out of something you get that hunger to come back again, and it’s all been working out really good for us.

I thanked the gentleman before disappearing out the same way I came in. Down the frosted backlit stairwells, and out through another trap door. Here Edbanger beats kicked. Fluorescent adolescents skipped, tripped and bumped to the beat. Their Friday night excitement had reached unparallel heights, no comedowns, no problems.
Like a track scratching, I hear the crowd whispering, MR. ME TOO