Music Album Preview: Clipse “Till The Casket Drops”

In case you couldn’t tell from our current Clipse cover story (yeah, this one), we’re pretty psyched for the return of Pusha T and Malice. Their long-awaited third album Till The Casket Drops is currently scheduled to drop on December 8, but Complex was lucky enough to hear a nearly-completed version of the album the other day. How do the Thornton brothers fare on their debut Columbia album, the first to feature producers outside of The Neptunes? Check out the complete track list and our initial thoughts on each song below…

Music Album of the Week: Chester French ‘Love The Future’

ARTIST: Chester French

ALBUM: Love The Future

SOUNDS LIKE: Pop-rock made by kids who love hip-hop

FUN FACT: Chester French’s founding members D.A. Wallach (left) and Maxwell Drummey named the group after the American sculptor Daniel Chester French, who designed the statue of Abraham Lincoln at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C.

WHY COMPLEX IS CO-SIGNING IT: Anyone who can get Pharrell Williams and Kanye West into a bidding war is worth taking a listen to. (For the record, Skateboard P won.) First featured on Entourage, the two Harvard University grads have been making music together ever since their freshman year in 2003. After signing with Star Trak, the duo in recent months have toured on and off with acts such as N*E*R*D and Lady Gaga and performed at SXSW. They’ve also released a free mixtape—Jacques Jams Vol. 1: Endurance—on their website that has artists like Pharrell, Bun B, Talib Kweli, Jadakiss, Diddy, Jermaine Dupri and Wale rapping over their instrumentals. Even if its genre isn’t your thing, Love The Future is accessible pop-rock with a hip-hop sensibility.

To promote their new album, which drops today, Maxwell and D.A. came by the office to give an exclusive track-by-track breakdown of Love The Future. Check out their behind-the-scenes stories and listen to snippets from the new LP below…

Music When Rappers Break Up With Their Producers

Clipse can still rap their asses off, but there is something noticeably missing from the new Clipse Presents: The Re-Up Gang album, which dropped today. That something? Good beats. You see, we fucking love Pusha T and Malice over Neptunes production. But over Sleepwalkers (very apt name, btw) tracks? Eh…not so much.

Which got us thinking: this isn’t the first time a rap act has carved out a dope sound with a certain producer and then parted ways to dismal effect. After the jump, check out our compilation of those rappers and their respective before/after track records.