One of rap’s most dangerous duos has returned to the fore with one of the most high-profile, controversial hip-hop releases of the year. Brothers Pusha T and Malice have finally reunited as Clipse and reconvened with longtime producer and friend Pharrell Williams to deliver Let God Sort Em Out, a blistering comeback album reestablishing their place among rap royalty.
The record not only cements their legendary reputation as the kings of coke rap, but it also provides a showcase for their collaborators, a chance for Malice to return to prominence after years in Pusha’s shadow, and a means to air out their plentiful grievances with their rivals and the rap game in general.
It’s also a damn good record, full of hard, skeletal beats and menacing raps that wouldn’t sound out of place on their best records from the 2000s. Find our key takeaways from LGSEO below.
They’re Still The Kings Of Coke Rap
If there is one thing above all we should take from Let God Sort Em Out, it’s that nobody does coke rap like Clipse. Though the brothers’ time actually selling drugs in Northern Virginia was short-lived, it has cast a long shadow over their solo and duo careers, forming the backbone of their lyricism. Malice originally left the group due to reservations over their glamorization of the illicit drug trade, and in the years between Clipse’s breakup and reformation, Pusha T has made it a personal mission to find the most creative ways to reference the white powder in rhyme.
Ironically, the best coke rap line on this album may go to Malice on "Ace Trumpets," who describes himself as "dressed in House of Gucci made from selling Lady Gaga." But Pusha gets in a few choice blows himself, delivering "White glove service with the brick, I am Luigi" on the same track.
The song that takes the cake for cocaine references has to be "M.T.B.T.T.F.," the title itself an acronym for "Mike Tyson, Blow To The Face." Pusha declares himself "the Bezos of the nasal," while Malice anoints himself royal titles: "Took chains and touched chains like King Midas / Imitation is flattery, they seem like us / But only 300 bricks can make you Leonidas." He even turns his back on faith, saying "Selling dope is a religion, the hammer’s in position."
Read more: For The Record: How Clipse’s 'Lord Willin'' Established Virginia’s Foothold In Rap
Malice Hasn’t Lost His Edge
Though he’s released his own music following Clipse’s breakup in 2010, Malice’s output in the decade and a half since hasn’t received nearly the same attention as Pusha T’s. His name change to No Malice and the changing focus of his raps from drugs to family and faith on 2013’s Hear Ye Him and its 2017 follow-up Let the Dead Bury the Dead didn’t earn him the same following as Pusha’s aggressive, skillful coke rap.
So it will please rap fans to know that Malice (he’s reclaimed his former name) hasn’t lost a bit of his gangster rap prowess on Let God Sort Em Out. In fact, he delivers some of the best lines on the entire record. Take this ruthlessly clever passage from "So Be It": "You ain’t believe, God did, you ain’t Khaled / All black, back to back, this ain’t traffic / Can’t wrap your head ‘round that, you ain’t Arab."
He and Pusha even go bar-for-bar on "E.B.I.T.D.A.," and on "P.O.V." he discusses his heel-turn back into a gangster character and the authenticity it’s rooted in: "I done sung along with rappers that I never believed / Came back for the money, that’s the devil in me / Had to hide it from the church, that’s the Jekyll in me." Malice may have been out of the spotlight for a while, but as his work here proves, he can always turn it back on.
Pharrell’s Production Is A Return To Classic Form
Pharrell Williams is as close as can be to an unofficial third member of Clipse. The fellow Northern Virginian produced many of the duo’s early hits as a member of the Neptunes, including their legendary debut single "Grindin’" and "Mr. Me Too" (he also featured on both tracks). Pharrell even instigated their reunion, making the brothers promise onstage at the 2022 edition of his Something in the Water festival that all three would make a new album together.
When it came time to do so, Williams produced the entirety of the record (as he had their first two albums Lord Willin’ and Hell Hath No Fury). For LGSEO, they split time between Virginia Beach and Louis Vuitton headquarters in Paris, where the producer currently serves as Men’s Creative Director for the luxury brand.
Though the intervening years have seen Williams gravitate away from coke rap and cultivate a family-friendly image, he doesn’t pull his punches on LGSEO. The record's best moments evoke the same minimal, cutthroat intensity of Hell Hath No Fury, with menacing guitar trills against boom-bap drums on "M.T.B.T.T.F." and nasty 808s paired with a sci-fi synth arpeggio on "All Things Considered." The streetwise sensibility of these tracks contrasts with more dramatic choral and orchestral elements on tracks like "So Be It," fronted by a sumptuous Arabic orchestral sample, and gospel choir backing vocals on "Birds Don’t Sing" and "So Far Ahead." It makes for a very effective juxtaposition of the group’s gritty past and its more glamorous present.
It’s Their Most Personal Album In Years…
LGSEO comes following a tragic stretch of years for the Thornton brothers. Both their mother and father passed away in 2021, and the bitterness of such a devastating double loss permeates through the album, nowhere more than on opening track "The Birds Don’t Sing."
Both rappers relate stories of regret and tragedy involving both parents. Pusha tells an anecdote about one of the last times he spoke to his mother. While she tried to convey to him that the end was near, he was too preoccupied with travel, planning to meet with Kanye West at Elon Musk’s house: "Told you I was going to Turks for Thanksgiving / I heard what I wanted to hear but didn’t listen." Meanwhile, Malice describes an even more devastating incident, finding his father’s body.
It’s an atypically confessional, intimate song from a group known for presenting themselves as anything but vulnerable, yet the decision to begin the record with such a statement makes it all the more impactful. It deepens the world of Clipse and presents us with two very different, deeply changed brothers, conveying how even familiar sounds can curdle in the midst of grief, as John Legend’s hook describes: "The birds don’t sing, they screech in pain."
…And Their Most Aggressive
Any artist coming back after a long hiatus has to come correct, but Clipse seems to have a particularly big chip on their shoulder. They’re using LGSEO to stake their claim as one of rap’s greatest acts, and to show us they’re serious, they’re making sure we know how unserious the rest of the field is.
Both brothers seem appalled by the gossipy nature of contemporary rap discourse, driven by numbers and social media instead of artistic value. Malice decries "keyboard killas" on a great "M.T.B.T.T.F." verse, while Pusha takes aim at streamers on "P.O.V.": "You stream kings but you never fit a crowd in there." That song in particular is littered with anti-internet sentiment, such as on the hook: "They content create, I despise that / I create content, then they tries that / Run these jewels, there’s rules, I don’t buy back / I’ve topped all these lists, where’s my prize at?"
Much has already been made of Pusha T dissing Travis Scott on "So Be It," with his negativity toward the fellow rapper stemming from a recording session he interrupted to play a version of Utopia – one that didn’t include a verse from Drake (who infamously lost a beef to Pusha in 2018). Pusha targets Scott with a caustic verse referencing his split from cosmetics mogul Kylie Jenner: "You cried in front of me, you died in front of me / Calabasas took your bitch and your pride in front of me / Her Utopia had moved right up the street / And her lip gloss was poppin’, she ain’t need you to eat."
As an extra twist of the knife, they invited Kendrick Lamar (another archenemy of Drake) to deliver a blazing verse on "Chains & Whips," criticizing the industry for doubting his appeal with Gen Z. The verse was apparently so incendiary and the optics of having Kendrick and Pusha on the same track in the wake of "Not Like Us" so undesirable that Universal — which repped both Clipse (through subsidiary Def Jam) and Drake — tried to have the verse removed from the release.
As a result, Clipse paid seven figures to buy themselves out of their contract with Def Jam and resigned to Roc Nation. It’s hard to find an act so uncompromising in their artistic principles, especially when those include dissing the biggest rappers alive and the industry as a whole.
It's Filled With Collaborators Old And New
Kendrick and Pharrell aren’t Clipse’s only high-profile collaborators on LGSEO. The album features a mix of old and new stars of the rap world, with guest verses from Tyler, the Creator on "P.O.V." and Nas on "Let God Sort Em Out / Chandeliers." Top-notch vocalists on the record include John Legend, providing a touching sentiment to the very personal opener "The Birds Don’t Sing," and The-Dream closing out "All Things Considered."
Two guest appearances feel particularly meaningful. "Inglorious Bastards" features a verse from Philadelphia rapper Ab-Liva, a one-time bandmate of the Clipse brothers along with Sandman in the short-lived group the Re-Up Gang. Meanwhile, "F.I.C.O." gives us a verse from upstate New York’s Stove God Cooks, a member of the Griselda Records collective along with Westside Gun and Benny the Butcher that many rap aficionados see as vanguards of a new wave of coke rap. Just as Ab-Liva’s appearance serves as an acknowledgement of Clipse’s history, so does Cooks’ feature feel like a passing of the torch to a new generation of gangster rap creativity.