The Clipse feat. Slim Thug
“Wamp Wamp (What It Do)”
Dir. R. Malcolm Jones

Pharrell is an “artist”, with the emphasis on the self-righteous quotation marks. Occasionally capable of great things, he is equally good at putting together sub-par tracks and successfully passing them off as stylish hit singles. With “Wamp Wamp (What It Do),” Pharrell throws trash all over his fellow Virginians’ track and calls it a single.

Simply put, “Wamp Wamp (What It Do)” is Snoop Dogg’s hit “Beautiful” gone horribly wrong. The video is just as strong as “Beautiful” was—tropical theme, babes, colors, rappers rapping, expensive clothes. But this time, the music sucks. On the low end, we have hollow-sounding conga that’s interesting for about 10 seconds. On the high end, we have an annoying plucked-string-type sound instead of a melody. And in between, we have Slim Thug sounding borderline-retarded on the chorus.

If “Beautiful” is the first thing that comes to mind, the second thing is the scene in “The Big Lebowski” when the Dude is taken to the garden party of porn king Jackie Treehorn. In this case, we are the Dude, the Clipse are those two Treehorn enforcers who pissed on our rug and boss us around, Slim Thug is the totally out-of-place naked woman on the trampoline, and “Skateboard P” is Treehorn himself. Like Treehorn’s party, the video has that unmistakable “weird cult” subtext going on—I highly doubt anyone but Pharrell really knows what “wamp wamp” means, but he’s got everyone saying it.

And like Treehorn, Pharrell at first appears to be the mastermind of an elaborate cultural scheme (the arrhythmic cracking tribal drums and snaky fusion-hop synths on the track), upon closer inspection it turns out he’s just a hack who’s drawing some dude with a giant wang on a personalized Post-It. Figuratively speaking.

Malice and Pusha T’s intimidating (if a bit hackneyed) lyrics are, unfortunately, overshadowed by all of the above. Doomed by their collaborators “Wamp Wamp” is the sound of a metrosexual Diddy wannabe forcing that fly ride on the cover of “Lord Willin’” down a dead end street.