Monday Kelefa Sanneh Bashing

The world's most irksome pop music critic ponders We Got It for Cheap: The Mixtape, Volume 3, a new CD by the hip-hop duo Clipse in a review in today's New York Times.

Now, as before, [Clipse members] Malice and Pusha-T specialize in punch lines that can be grim or goofy or both at once. Barely a minute into the first song, Pusha-T lights into Lil Wayne. “I don’t respect who you applauding,” he snarls, scoffing at Lil Wayne’s newfound status as a kingpin, adding, “His metaphors boring/Don’t make me turn daddy’s little girl to orphan/That would mean I’d have to kill Baby, like abortion.” ...

Still, over beats pilfered from Jay-Z (“Roc Boys”), Kanye West (“Good Morning”), Raekwon (“Rainy Dayz”) and others, Malice and Pusha-T deliver almost nothing but witty, well-made stanzas. And when they get carried away with wordplay — “Rotate them chickens like a weather vane/The wind blow, it come and go, I’m a hurricane/Listen again: I hurry ’caine” — the only sensible reaction is to get carried away with them.

I think the ever-Panglossian Sanneh has grossly overstated that last bit. In fact, after reading the aforementioned witty, well-made stanza, the reaction I actually had was to do a Van Gogh and cut off one of my ears.