clipping. is an American experimental hip-hop group from Los Angeles, California. The group consists of rapper Daveed Diggs and producers William Hutson and Jonathan Snipes. The group began in 2009 as a remix project, with Hutson and Snipes taking a cappellas of mainstream rap artists and making power electronics and noise remixes of them to amuse themselves. Diggs joined in 2010 and began to write his own raps over their compositions and the group self-released their first album, midcity, in 2013. The group has drawn comparisons to the likes of Dälek, Death Grips, My Bloody Valentine, Tim Hecker and Shabazz Palaces. The Guardian described their sound as “the sort of shrill thrills you imagine could function as incidental soundtrack music for a documentary about abattoirs or might conceivably be the work of a young band intent on twisting industrial metal into brutal new shapes. With rapping on top.” Rolling Stone called them “[n]imble-tongued, beat-fractured L.A. hip-hop spilled over the abrasive crunches, squeals, clangs, slurps, and static of experimental musique concrète.” As part of their experimental style, the band adhere to certain stylistic limitations. Their instrumentation is derived from real world samples (e.g. using recordings of bottles being hit or bricks breaking) instead of traditional instruments. Similarly, Diggs writes his rap in second person, all ‘I, me’ language is off limits.

Haleek Maul is an American rapper, record producer, and a founding member of the collective On the Tanz. He has collaborated with the likes of Deniro Farrar, Shady Blaze, Hot Sugar, and Saul Williams. Noisey has described him as “the new hustler of horrorcore”. In 2012 at age 16, Haleek Maul released his debut EP Oxyconteen which Spin named “Rap Release of the Week”, and Fact placed it at number 48 on the “50 Best Albums of 2012” list. In that year, he also released a collaborative mixtape with Chicago production duo Supreme Cuts, titled Chrome Lips, which Clash included it on the “Top 10 Mixtapes of the Year” list. He released a mixtape, Prince Midas, in 2015, an EP, In Permanence, in 2018, and his debut solo studio album, Errol, in 2020.

DeForrest Brown, Jr. is an Alabama-raised, Ex-American rhythmanalyst, writer, and representative of the Make Techno Black Again campaign. As Speaker Music, he channels the African American modernist tradition of rhythm and soul music as an intellectual site and sound of generational trauma. On Juneteenth of 2020, he released the album Black Nationalist Sonic Weaponry on Planet Mu. His written work explores the links between the Black experience in industrialized labor systems and Black innovation in electronic music, and has appeared in Artforum, Triple Canopy, NPR, CTM Festival, Mixmag, among many others. He has performed or presented work at Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin; Camden Arts Centre, UK; Unsound Festival, Krakow; Sónar, Barcelona; Issue Project Room, New York; and elsewhere. Assembling a Black Counter Culture is Brown’s debut book.