To mark the occasion of their reunion, Clipse went on a historical press run blowing up their petty beefs and label drama with the theatricality of the promoters you used to find in the Deep South wrestling territories of the 20th century. This is an energy Pusha T and Malice are used to.
Twenty years ago, after the Virginia Beach brothers put out the classic Lord Willin’, they were stuck in label purgatory and on a crusade against rap industry politics. Afraid of being left in the lurch, Clipse teamed up with Philly hardheads Ab-Liva and Sandman as the supergroup the Re-Up Gang, and started the We Got It 4 Cheap mixtape series. There, the snarling duo sharpened their colorful coke rap and aired their grievances. “To the hell with the label woes, suited-out CEOs,” says Pusha on the vintage Trackmasters beat, fed up with their record label doing them dirty. It built them a reputation as underdogs, as self-mythologizing showmen, and laid the groundwork for 2006’s Hell Hath No Fury, where they became one of the defining rap duos of the era.
Back then, Pusha and Malice came by the chip on their shoulder honestly—now it’s just a part of the Clipse experience. Let God Sort Em Out, the first Clipse album in nearly 16 years, works hard not only to be worthy of their comeback, but to make their comeback feel necessary. So here’s Pharrell using PTO from his day job as the men’s creative director of Louis Vuitton to reunite with Pusha and Malice and add some modern blockbuster polish to the Neptunes sound. And a splash of hammy balladry from John Legend. And Instagram gossip page fodder in the form of deciphering which lyrics are aimed at who. For some reason, LGSEO wants to convince us of the importance and relevance of Clipse, like they’re not already fuckin’ Clipse.
Maybe it’s that the brothers, savvy as ever, have picked up on the fact that mainstream rap albums are now split into two categories: The spectacles and everything else. Pusha and Malice have always sided with the former anyway. “We ain’t throwing these raps together and trying to throw out an album or throw out a mixtape with 30 songs on it,” Malice said years ago. “And have all your drunken friends with their hats backwards rapping on it.”
LGSEO is an extremely considered and intentional album with features that will appease the three corners of Clipse fandom: For the diehards, Ab-Liva is on here “playing in the snow like Rudolph.” For the East Coast drug rap aficionados, Griselda’s Stove God Cooks drops in for a sleepy hook on “F.I.C.O.” Repping the Neptunes classicists is Tyler, the Creator trying to match Push and Malice’s shit talk on “P.O.V.” (Clipse wipe the floor with him.) Pusha lays into the rappers treating the game like content creation and Malice references his spiritual journey: “I was the only one to walk away and really be free,” he raps. (One of my favorite parts of the project is the way Malice talks about his hiatus like he moved to the mountains to live with the monks.)
Just like the old days, the brothers bond over their cruel jokes, lavish motivation raps, and descriptions of the drug trade vivid enough to appear in a late-era Richard Price novel. At 52 (Malice) and 48 (Pusha), they’re still pretty nice with it on the mic. Malice’s voice is raspier now, though that only makes his wary sage energy more pronounced, as he references Bible verses and ties his drug-dealing fantasies to any pop culture reference that comes into his mind (The Revenant, I Am Legend, Lady Gaga).
Pusha’s delivery has a pinch of wear but it’s still smoothly villainous, dropping in disparaging remarks (calling his broke enemies “browsenaires” is up there) and flexes on the regular. “Inglorious Bastards” really captures the “fuck you” but with the sarcastically blown kiss feeling of the Re-Up Gang tapes—it could probably be on one of them if it had DJ tags and a monologue about his credit card purchases. In one moment Pusha’s way out of pocket (“Me just being me, respect to PnB I probably never eat at Roscoe’s,” he barks on “So Far Ahead”), and in the next, he’s interrogating an emotion most wouldn’t outside of therapy: “See you were checkin’ boxes/I was checkin’ my mentions,” he says on “The Birds Don’t Sing,” feeling the guilt of being so fixated on the rapper lifestyle that he didn’t realize his mother was dying.
Holding back the comeback is Pharrell. In 2025, everything he touches feels so corporate, a far cry from the stargazing sound of the Neptunes and N.E.R.D. He was never an amazing singer, but his imperfect falsetto made songs cool. That’s not the case here: The choir effect of “So Far Ahead” is emotionless, and his twangy melodies on “Chains & Whips” belong in something like the heavy-handed musical sequence in Sinners, not behind Pusha bragging about his watch collection.
Even more of a buzzkill are the beats. At the Neptunes’ peak, you could hear traces of Larry Smith, Dre, Erick Sermon, and more inside their singular intergalactic funk—the synth on “Frontin’” that sounds like futuristic Death Row, the mind-blowing rhythm of “Superthug.” These Pharrell instrumentals on LGSEO don’t have that nerdy imagination. Instead you get a lot of stuffy stadium bass with an HR-approved bounce that sounds like it was recorded in Pharrell’s Louis Vuitton office in Paris—probably because it was. It makes the album feel like an ad for his next collection. And to be honest, the Clipse reunion has been like that since “Chains & Whips” premiered on the LV runway two years ago.
The best beats on LGSEO are the ones that just do old Neptunes at half-speed. You know, the click-clack of the percussion on “All Things Considered,” the blast of apocalyptic synths with an eerie Hell Hath No Fury edge on “Let God Sort Em Out/Chandeliers,” which gets cut off for a tediously triumphant beat switch so Nas can do Nas. Also, “E.B.I.T.D.A.,” which is a little funky, with its spaced-out In My Mind sparkle. The whimsical touch of the beat opens up Clipse’s imagination. “I’m sleepwalkin’ y’all don’t dream enough/My third passport I ain’t seen enough,” raps Push. One of the elements that separated the duo from the million rappers getting off coke punchlines on Smack DVDs was that their realism was matched by the head-in-the-clouds spirit of a kid looking through the bins at a record store for the first time. The cosmic Neptunes beats were big in getting them there, but Pharrell’s newfound opulence flattens that side of them.
In the past, Pharrell’s personality came through in beats that could be funny, like the tongue-click of “Drop It Like It’s Hot,” or weird, such as the droning hyphy of “Mr. Me Too.” Now, he has this efficient professionalism, a way of making music that aims to satisfy Clipse fans who are just happy to see him and the boys back together again. Let God Sort Em Out coasts on the history they share with each other and with us, settling for good enough. Every now and then on the album, you’ll hear this tag telling us that the music is “culturally inappropriate.” I wish it actually was.
What’s clear is that Pharrell’s heart isn’t in it, the same way Pusha and Malice’s hearts aren’t in their disses. “You cried in front of me, you died in front of me/Calabasas took your bitch and your pride in front of me,” raps Pusha, seemingly disgusted at the thought of Travis Scott on “So Be It.” But Clipse are a feeling, and I don’t feel that they really care that much about what Travis, or Kanye, or, uh, Jim Jones have going on.
This is all a distraction from what Pusha and Malice actually do well: rap. It’s no question that they’ve still got love for the form and that their brotherhood is tied deeply to the genre. I think of “M.T.B.T.T.F.,” one of the rare Pharrell beats with oomph, where they both whip out an a capella flow that channels everyone from Biggie to Kool G Rap. It’s high on their usual lyrical theatrics, but they’re not trying too hard to grab headlines. “You niggas is screenwriters, we dreamwriters/Took chains and touched change like King Midas,” raps Malice from the gut. Just Pusha and Malice getting sinister and mythic over a hard beat. I’ll take that.
