There Existed an Addiction to Blood
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There Existed an Addiction to Blood is the third studio album by American hip hop group clipping. It was released on October 18, 2019 through Sub Pop. It received mostly positive reviews from music critics.
Music and lyrics
Clipping described There Existed an Addiction to Blood in a press release as a "transmutation of horrorcore", continuing that it "absorbs the hyper-violent horror tropes of the Murder Dog era, but re-imagines them in a new light: still darkly-tinted and somber, but in a weirder and more vivid hue". Throughout the album, Daveed Diggs describes "gruesome movie scenarios", but, according to the Financial Times journalist Ludovic Hunter-Tilney, the lyrics do not contain the "sick [humor]" and misogyny associated with the genre. Diggs speaks in the second person in the tracks, which Tom Breihan of Stereogum interpreted to be in order to do "everything he can to put us, the listeners, in the shoes of the victims".
The album title comes from the Sam Waymon song "The Blood of Thing (Part 2) Shadow of the Cross", written for the vampire film Ganja & Hess. This song is also sampled in "Blood of the Fang".
Critical reception
| Aggregate scores | |
|---|---|
| Source | Rating |
| AnyDecentMusic? | 7.6/10 |
| Metacritic | 73/100 |
| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| AllMusic | |
| Clash | 8/10 |
| Financial Times | |
| The Line of Best Fit | 8/10 |
| Loud and Quiet | 7/10 |
| Paste | 8.5/10 |
| Pitchfork | 4.5/10 |
| The Skinny | |
| Spectrum Culture | |
| Uncut | 8/10 |
There Existed an Addiction to Blood received mostly positive reviews: aggregating website Metacritic reports a normalized rating of 73, based on 11 critical reviews. Paul Simpson of AllMusic described the album's "most exciting tracks" as "downright hallucinatory" and considered that Diggs' delivery is "precise and unflinching, detailing gruesome scenes with pinpoint accuracy". The Line of Best Fit's Jack Bray hailed as "disheartening and sonically intriguing", adding that it "is yet another successful experiment for the group and one of the eeriest examples of modern hip-hop to date".
Track listing
All tracks are produced by Clipping.
| No. | Title | Writer(s) | Length |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | "Intro" | Daveed Diggs Jonathan Snipes William Hutson | 1:04 |
| 2. | "Nothing Is Safe" | Diggs Snipes Hutson | 4:57 |
| 3. | "He Dead" (featuring Ed Balloon) | Diggs Snipes Hutson Edmund Oribhabor | 4:22 |
| 4. | "Haunting (Interlude)" | Diggs Snipes Hutson | 0:57 |
| 5. | "La Mala Ordina" (with The Rita, featuring Elcamino and Benny the Butcher) | Diggs Snipes Hutson Demetrius Jackson Jeremie Pennick John W. Snyder Sam McKinlay | 5:46 |
| 6. | "Club Down" (with Sarah Bernat) | Diggs Snipes Hutson | 4:30 |
| 7. | "Prophecy (Interlude)" | Diggs Snipes Hutson | 1:11 |
| 8. | "Run for Your Life" (featuring La Chat) | Diggs Snipes Hutson Chastity Daniels | 4:52 |
| 9. | "The Show" | Diggs Snipes Hutson | 3:04 |
| 10. | "Possession (Interlude)" | Diggs Snipes Hutson | 2:10 |
| 11. | "All in Your Head" (featuring Counterfeit Madison and Robyn Hood) | Diggs Snipes Hutson Sharon Udoh | 4:29 |
| 12. | "Blood of the Fang" | Diggs Snipes Hutson Sam Waymon | 4:49 |
| 13. | "Story 7" | Diggs Snipes Hutson | 3:40 |
| 14. | "Attunement" (with Pedestrian Deposit) | Diggs Snipes Hutson Jonathan Borges Shannon Kennedy | 4:46 |
| 15. | "Piano Burning" | Annea Lockwood | 18:00 |
| Total length: | 68:37 |
Track 15 is omitted from cassette copies of Addiction, likely due to its unusually long runtime.
Charts
| Chart (2019) | Peak position |
|---|---|
| US Heatseekers Albums (Billboard) | 3 |
| US Independent Albums (Billboard) | 8 |
External links
- at Discogs (list of releases)