When Daveed Diggs was a child, he and his schoolfriend William Hutson would draw pictures inspired by the space-age album covers of funk legends Parliament. These drawings were filled with gleaming UFOs and eccentric interplanetary travellers. Diggs would go on to become an actor, winning a Tony award for his roles in Hamilton and voicing Sebastian the crab in The Little Mermaid’s live-action remake. However, outside of Hollywood and Broadway, Diggs and Hutson continue to collaborate on imaginative sci-fi projects in underground rap.
Together with Hutson’s college roommate Jonathan Snipes, the trio formed Clipping in Los Angeles in 2010. Their music tells blood-soaked horror stories and fables of enslaved people in outer space, set against a backdrop of warped rave music on their new album Dead Channel Sky. Diggs raps with precision, creating a cyberpunk world of hackers, clubgoers, future-soldiers, and digital avatars.
Their unique approach to music has earned them nominations for the prestigious Hugo awards. Diggs, who deliberately avoids using the first person in his lyrics, believes it opens up new possibilities for storytelling within the rap genre. The characters in their songs are ambiguous in gender and race, allowing fans to create their own interpretations and connections between the songs.
Clipping’s latest album is filled with storytelling, with Diggs portraying different characters in each song. From socially conscious MCs to aloof nightclub-goers, each character reflects different facets of a destructive capitalist society at war. The album draws inspiration from classic sci-fi tropes, using futuristic wars on other planets as a metaphor for modern life in the west.
Dead Channel Sky is influenced by various reading materials, including William Gibson’s Neuromancer. The trio also draws inspiration from lesser-known sources such as the 1996 Afrofuturist film The Last Angel of History. Their work has been recognized in sci-fi circles, with nominations for the Hugo awards for their previous projects.
Clipping sees a strong connection between cyberpunk themes and hip-hop, both of which flourished in the 1980s. They believe that both hackers and hip-hop producers are creatively repurposing technology to build a future out of mass-produced materials. Their diverse rapping styles on Dead Channel Sky aim to capture the creative liberation of early hip-hop, exploring new possibilities within the genre.
Man könnte über schnelle Sachen rappen, langsame Sachen, Lasergeräusche – all dieser andere Unsinn. Neben Hip-Hop ist Cyberpunk eng mit Rave-Musik verbunden – denken Sie an die Clubszene in der Matrix oder an Underworld, Orbital und den Prodigy auf dem Soundtrack zu Hackers – und so springt Dead Channel Sky zwischen verschiedenen Tanz-Subgenres, einschließlich Big-Beat (Change the Channel), Acid-House (Keep Pushing) und Drum’n’Bass (Dodger). Aber Hutson sieht hier „einen seltsamen Widerspruch“. „Ein Rave ist das körperlichste, verkörperte Gefühl von Freude“, sagt er. „Es geht nicht um die Konnektivität des Internets – es geht darum, in einem Lagerhaus mit einer Menge Leuten zu sein.“ Diese instabile, widersprüchliche Beziehung zwischen dem Digitalen und dem Physischen liegt im Herzen von Dead Channel Sky, wo imaginierte Realitäten Fragen zu unseren eigenen aufwerfen: Ob virtuelle Bereiche aus „pixeligem Wind“ brüchiger sind als unsere. Diggs schlägt vor: „Wenn wir derzeit in der Apokalypse leben, die die Cyberpunk-Fiktion der 80er und 90er Jahre vorhergesagt hat, ist dies die Musik.“ Dead Channel Sky wird am 14. März über Sub Pop veröffentlicht.