Flashback Friday: Kelis featuring Pusha T - Good Stuff | Baby’s first Push

It’s been MONTHS since I did a Flashback Friday post. As with many things on this raggedy lil’ blog — what was supposed to be a weekly thing became a ‘whenever I feel like it, I guess’ thing.

OH WELL.

With Virginian rap duo Clipse back together for their latest album Let God Sort Em Out (which I’ve been listening to non-stop for the past week) and reunited with Pharrell Williams who produced the entire album — I wanted to flashback to the first time I was introduced to Clipse.

Now, me posting about some rap shit isn’t regular programming on this blog. But I’ve been telling myself for a while now that I want this blog to be more of a reflection of the range of music that I listen to. I’m failing at that. But this is me trying...again. Soooo, yep. I do listen to rap and I’ve always listened to and liked Clipse. I shake my ass to “Wamp Wamp (What it Do)” every fortnight, Harlem Shake to “Trill” once a month and make pigeon noises outside to “What Happened to That Boy” on the second Wednesday night of January.

But back to the first time I was introduced to Clipse — it was via Kelis’ second single, “Good Stuff”. The song featured Pre-Pusha T, who then went by Terrar. And despite being on the song himself without his brother Malice and Clipse not being a thing to us just yet, he does shout out Clipse on the song.

And it was only upon seeing this video to “Good Stuff” that I realised ‘Oh, that was one of the guys at the end of the video for “Caught Out There”'.

I remember not liking “Good Stuff” at all when I first heard it. I liked the David LaChapelle directed music video far more than I liked the song. “Good Stuff” just felt like such a strange choice of single to follow up “Caught Out There”. Then again, some would consider “Caught Out There” to be a strange choice of single to have released in the first place. “Good Stuff” to me just felt half baked. Kelis barely giving anything. The beat being so monotone. And Pre-Pusha’s verse feeling like it was cut short. I always felt like he should have had two verses.

HENNYWAY.

I wasn’t a fan of the “Good Stuff” initially. But when I bought Kelis’ Kaleidoscope album months later, I found myself liking the song more and more each time I listened to the album. It just works better as part of an album, despite it being so oddly placed as the first main song after the album into. I certainly wouldn’t have opened the album proper with “Good Stuff”. But Kaleidoscope as an album has such a strange sound and off-kilter vibe to it, between The Neptunes’ production, Pharrell’s odd ball lyrics and Kelis’ ‘I’mma give you nothing, but with tone’ energy, that “Good Stuff” being the first song kinda…works. But even with me growing to like “Good Stuff”, I still feel that Pre-Pusha shoulda had two verses on the song.

If this scratches your itch for more Kelis, Clipse and Neptunes, check out the song “Popular Thug” and “Daddy” from Kelis’ second album Wanderland, which feature Pusha T and Malice respectively. “Popular Thug” really shoulda just been a Clipse song.

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💿 Album reviews: Wanderland