Clipse are set to release their first new album in 15 years, Let God Sort Em Out, on July 11th in partnership with Roc Nation. In a recent GQ interview, Pusha T explained the comeback project was initially slated for release through Def Jam, but the label ultimately balked at a guest verse from Kendrick Lamar.
Kendrick is featured on a song titled “Chains & Whips,” which Push said was the first song to emerge from their album recording sessions. According to Push, Def Jam’s parent company, Universal Music Group, was particularly concerned about the optics of the collaboration between two of Drake’s most prominent rivals, especially with UMG still tangled in an ongoing lawsuit with Drake.
Pusha T called their fears “stupid,” asserting that none of Kendrick’s lyrics could be construed as even a subliminal diss. Nevertheless, Def Jam wanted to play it safe and allegedly issued an ultimatum.
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“They wanted me to ask Kendrick to censor his verse, which of course I was never doing,” Push recalled. “And then they wanted me to take the record off. 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…”
With Clipse and Pusha T [as a solo artist] subsequently free from the clutches of Def Jam, they brought the completed Clipse album and “plenty more music” to other suitors before landing at JAY-Z’s Roc Nation. “I think that that synergy, just in a rap sense, is going to speak volumes,” Push said about the new partnership, though he sidestepped a question about a potential JAY-Z feature on the album.
Later in the GQ interview, Push also weighed in on Drake’s lawsuit against UMG over its release of “Not Like Us,” framing it within the context of his own 2018 beef with the rapper.
“If [Drake’s] adamant to have a lawsuit, it’s only because he knows all the things that they did to suppress everything that was happening around ‘[The Story of] Adidon’ and the verses and the records and things that were happening back then,” he speculated, adding the caveat that he had no insider knowledge of Drake’s specific lawsuit.
Editor’s Note: Read why Kendrick Lamar’s “Euphoria” was the warning Drake didn’t heed here.
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