The Deep

Experimental hip-hop group Clipping’s The Deep is a dark sci-fi tale about the underwater-dwelling descendants of African women thrown off slave ships, based on the mythology of Detroit electronic group Drexciya. The song was originally commissioned for a This American Life about Afrofuturism in 2017. The track earned Clipping a nomination for a 2018 Hugo award, and the band constructed a sound installation based on The Deep at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art. This release comes on the heels of The Deep, a novella by Rivers Solomon (with Clipping credited as co-authors) inspired by the title track and published by Saga Press. The vinyl include two otherwise-unreleased extra tracks – including Aquacode Databreaks, which features Shabazz Palaces – and the vinyl edition includes instrumental versions of all three tracks.