clipping. – Dead Channel Sky

      Immaculate hip-hop cyberpunk...









       14 · 03 · 2025













      Cyberpunk remains the last significant popular portrayal of the future. Since its rise in the early 1980s, through the works of authors like William Gibson and films such as Blade Runner, the sci-fi aesthetic has endured; the success of the recent Cyberpunk 2077 game exemplifies this. The ongoing visibility and significance of this distinctly 1980s style (with its hallmark elements of neon lights, synthesizer music, and the advent of globalization) serves as a strong critique of capitalism's failure to create a more unified or simply improved popular vision of the future over the past 50 years.

      It’s also easy to understand why cyberpunk, with its bleak outlook of a world rife with pervasive technology, corporate monopolies, corrupt politicians, and severe climate changes, continues to resonate in 2025. Often, our current techno-feudal rulers read impactful dystopian sci-fi as guides rather than warnings. The experimental rap group clipping. aims to reclaim the radical essence of cyberpunk. This trio (consisting of vocalist Daveed Diggs and producers Jonathan Snipes and William Hutson) has a history with science fiction, as two of their earlier full-length albums received Hugo Award nominations, the genre’s most prestigious accolade, demonstrating their deep appreciation for sci-fi's politically charged nature and its connections to hip-hop.

      Following two intense, horror-oriented projects, clipping. returns to the genre where they excel the most. ‘Dead Channel Sky’ (named in homage to the first line of William Gibson’s landmark cyberpunk novel Neuromancer) is a twenty-track whirlwind that employs and deconstructs the genre’s aesthetics (both thematic and musical) to express unfiltered truths about our troubled contemporary reality. Clipping. brilliantly conjures a relentless stream of vivid imagery, akin to being immersed in a virtual reality headset, with scenes that feel like speculative fiction while also being strikingly real. In ‘Polaroids’, Diggs’ captivatingly precise raps create images of “high-rises contorting like trees searching for sunlight,” ‘Dodger’ states, “you are either in the net/or you are against the wall,” and the thrilling and emotionally charged standout ‘Ask What Happened’ asserts that “history and future belong to the 1%.”

      Complementing the timeless nature of Diggs’ lyrics is a dizzying production landscape that brings older electronic music elements into the present; consider the squelchy techno synths driving ‘Keep Pushing’, or the dynamic breakbeats of ‘Change The Channel’. Instead of merely imitating past qualities, the ever-experimental Snipes and Hutson enhance them, creating a sound that feels immediate and contemporary. There’s nothing nostalgic or retrospective in the frenetic machine-gun style rap of ‘Dodger’, the harsh, jagged synths of ‘Code’, or the uplifting drum and bass rhythms of ‘Ask What Happened’. Like the characters in a cyberpunk tale, clipping. seems to have taken remnants of older technologies and transformed them into something dazzlingly and startlingly new.

      In a world where the internet and technology are increasingly controlled by a handful of small, malicious, and often just plain inept powers, ‘Dead Channel Sky’ presents a vision of an alternative present, where the potential of technology feels just as exhilarating as it did before the era dominated by big tech. On a more straightforward level, it serves as a masterclass in vibrant, distinctive, and exhilarating hip-hop that balances its complexity with engaging, lively storytelling. Put on your headphones, connect, and step into clipping.’s meticulously crafted cyber world.

      9/10

      Words: Tom Morgan

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