Clipse. Photo by Cian Moore.
Let God Sort Em Out, the first album in 16 years from Pusha T and Malice’s beloved rap duo Clipse, is out on July 11 via Jay-Z’s Roc Nation. The project was originally slated to come out summer 2024 via Def Jam, but as Pusha T revealed in a new GQ profile, a dispute over a Kendrick Lamar verse led the UMG-owned label to drop both the Clipse and Pusha T as a solo act — though at the requests of the artists.
After presenting the completed album to Def Jam last year, Pusha says the label balked at Kendrick’s verse on a song called “Chains & Whips.” It was the same season as Drake and Kendrick’s beef and culminated in the monster hit “Not Like Us, the fracas arriving a couple of years after Drake lost a separate diss track back-and-forth with Pusha T. And though Drake had not yet sued UMG for defamation — that would happen in January 2025 — UMG were allegedly still concerned over “the antagonistic [optics] of two of Drake’s biggest enemies linking on wax.”
“They wanted me to ask Kendrick to censor his verse, which of course I was never doing,” Pusha says, calling their concerns “stupid” and adding that the label pushed him to take the whole song off the album. “And so, after a month of not doing it, Steve Gawley, the lawyer over there was like, ‘We’ll just drop the Clipse.’ But that can’t work because I’m still there [solo]. But [if] you let us all go… ”
So Clipse and Def Jam parted ways, and it didn’t take long to find a new home for the fourth Clipse album. “It felt good to even see how other labels were buying for the project,” Pusha says.
Ironically, Pusha says that restarting any beef with Drake is of no interest to him. Despite the occasional subliminal reference to their hostilities on songs like Travis Scott’s “MELTDOWN,” Pusha says he’s not moved to respond. “I think after everything that had been done, I don’t think there was ever anything subliminal to be said ever again in life.”
