Co-created by renowned writer Dave Eggers and the creative team that came up with 2012’s 90 Days, 90 Reasons, 30 Days, 30 Songs is a daily, evolving playlist featuring artists creating original material in support of protesting and defeating this election cycle’s Republican presidential nominee, Donald Trump. And within the first couple of weeks the project has seen contributions from the likes of internationally recognized acts including Death Cab for Cutie, Franz Ferdinand, Aimee Mann and a lengthy and impressive list of others. Of course, unsurprisingly, a number of artist from all over the world have submitted music to support the cause, which has resulted in the project having much more music than they intended — and their homepage having more than one song a day.
Now, if you’ve been frequenting this site over the past couple of years, you’ve come across a number of posts on Los Angeles-based experimental hip-hop trio clipping. Comprised of production duo Jonathan Snipes and William Hutson, along with emcee and actor Daveed Diggs, the trio never expected to achieve commercial success — as their sound consists of Snipes’ and Hutson’s sparse and abrasive productions consisting of industrial clinking and clanking and various field recordings with Diggs’ incredibly dexterous, rapid fire narrative-heavy delivery full of surreally violent imagery and swaggering braggadocio. And with the release of their full-length debut Midcity, the album caught the attention of renowned indie label Sub Pop Records, who over the past decade have developed a reputation for releasing the work of a diverse array of artists including Debo Band, Shabazz Palaces, GOAT, Daughn Gibson and others, as well as the Los Angeles-based hip-hop trio’s 2014 sophomore effort clppng, an effort that received attention across the blogosphere, including this site.
The trio went on a bit of a hiatus as Diggs won a Tony for his dual roles of Thomas Jefferson and the Marquis de Lafayette in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s smash-hit musical Hamilton; however, at some point the members of the trio reconvened to write, record and release their much-anticipated follow-up Splendor & Misery, a Sci-Fi dystopian concept album that is both futuristic and yet describes our increasingly frightening and bizarre time. And with the album’s first four singles “Baby Don’t Sleep,” “Air ‘Em Out,” “A Better Place,” and “Taking Off,” the trio further cemented their burgeoning reputation for pairing harsh and abrasive, minimalist and industrial-leaning productions with Diggs’ rapid fire, tongue, twisting rhymes; however, the new material reveals a subtle refinement of their sound in which the material at points possesses a strangely melodic quality that lends it a bit of radio-friendliness.
Recently, the trio participated in the 30 Songs, 30 Days project, contributing a vicious and scathing anti-Donald Trump diss track “Fat Fingers” in which Diggs references Nas‘ legendary diss track “Ether” and the Canadian anthem “O, Canada” to a sparse yet forcefully minimalist production featuring a sample of people whislting the melody of the Canadian anthem, boom bap-beats, industrial clang and clatter. Fuck Donald Trump and everything about him and his family!
