New Video: The Clipse, "Back By Popular Demand"
Pusha T and Cam'ron dress up as John Fogerty and Eddie Vedder in the grimy, but colorful, Rik Cordero-directed video to the Clipse's new "Back By Popular Demand," a.k.a. "Popeyes." As previously evidenced by another recent song, "Doorman," the Clipse are onto something good with a mariachi horns sound-and their upcoming album, Til The Casket Drops, is shaping up nicely. Unfortunately, the above video is only for the heavily bleeped clean version of "Popular Demand." So what you should do is open up another window on your computer machine, and sync up this one to listen to while you watch. You don't want to miss any of the rhymes. 'Cause they're so excellent.
I could be misremembering, but I feel like the last time I copy edited something about Malice and Pusha T (a year, year and a half ago), their label was very specifically explicit about them being just plain Clipse, none of this fancy Batman-esque "the" stuff goin' on.
I think you're remembering right. I remember going back and forth with copy/fact-check/publicists about the same thing. To me, "Clipse" with no "the" reads so much clunkier, i just can't do it.
It definitely sounds cooler with the "the." Anyway, the Clipse are fucking amazing, so this post is deeply appreciated over here in Werewolf Land.
To be fair, Malice's Vimeo user name is "Malice of the Clipse"
The struggle to pin down what an artist's "official" name is — and the different takes that the label, the publicist, and the artist (not to mention whoever designed their website) have on the subject — is one of the most not especially interesting but surprisingly common problems encountered in music journalism. It can drive one mildly insane, not least because in some cases, the artists themselves change their minds from album to album. (See also the "‘Genius/GZA’ or ‘GZA/Genius?’" entry in the OED.)