The boldest, brashest hip-hop debut of 2002 came from the Clipse, two brothers who loved knotty wordplay, spaced-out future-funk beats and discovering increasingly gymnastic ways to describe the drug trade. Emerging from Virginia Beach—halfway between Outkast’s Atlanta and Mobb Deep’s New York—the Clipse’s Malice and Pusha T were steely, smooth, impossibly witty and, thanks to long-time collaborators The Neptunes, reinforced by some of the most forward-thinking beats of the decade.

Clipse and The Neptunes had readied an entire major label album in 1999 before getting dropped by Elektra. Once The Neptunes became the in-demand hitmakers of the moment, the Clipse were signed as the first rap group to their Star Trak imprint. Though The Neptunes were producing hits for Britney Spears and Usher, Lord Willin’ was a completely uncompromising sucker punch of street-level slick talk and avant-garde beat work. The shockingly sparse lunchroom-table beat of the album’s lead single, “Grindin’”, was more minimal than anything on the radio—the rhythm and silences were as stark as anything by Run-DMC, but the glossy textures were teleported from the future. Malice felt it was too minimal, and Pusha T said he had a difficult time finding a way to even rap over such a peculiar beat, going as far as to write the song three times. However, their ice-cold delivery helped propel it to become the group’s first Top 40 hit, and a defining song of the early 2000s. The album’s follow-up single, “When the Last Time”, is ostensibly a club record, but swerves on abrasive synth noises, and features no shortage of the duo’s ambitious rhyme combinations like “Obnoxious with the women/Hot tucked in the linen”.

Not long after the release of Lord Willin’, the Clipse turned up on the debut solo single from Justin Timberlake, and helped launch a pop-culture phenomenon along the way. Meanwhile, a teenaged Kendrick Lamar honed his craft freestyling to the “Grindin’” beat. For decades, Pusha T stood forth as the critically acclaimed elder statesman of crime rap—and it was the unique rhyme combinations, vivid grind talk, breezy punchlines and cool demeanour of the instant classic Lord Willin’ that gave him his bona fides.

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