In the pantheon of prestige rap, it never gets fancier than a Clipse reunion. While Pusha T and Malice predated the whole “play this street rapper at New York Fashion Week” motif, their stylishly spare soundscapes and high-brow dexterity made them couture rap before couture rap. They could spit like a sleeker Little Brother, but there’s a nihilistic thrill in the idea that they might sell coke to your little brother, too.
They’ve been relatively dormant since their “Til the Casket Drops” album 16 years ago. Now, they’re back together for their fourth album “Let God Sort Em Out,” and it’s kinda like a big deal. With imposing production and features from Nas, Tyler, the Creator and Kendrick Lamar, you get the sense that they know it’s a big deal, too — sometimes, perhaps, to their detriment. Laced with unfailingly sharp rapping, but dented by heavy-handed self-mythology and intermittently sterile Pharrell Williams beats, “Let God Sort Em Out” is a well-executed album occasionally weighed down by its grandiosity. Ruthless and in control, it’s also proof of a brotherly connection and fundamental mastery that can survive a generation-spanning hiatus.
Svelte yet heavy, Clipse’s latest sees all their phonetic and poetical gifts rendered to subtly maximal effect, with their lithe vocals cresting Pharrell’s glossy surfaces like snowfall. The brothers’ voices can shift between callous drug lord or grateful son within the same song; their intonations can be decisively sinister (“Chains and Whips”) or quietly grateful (“Birds Don’t Sing”).
Despite the album title, God can’t sort through everything — especially the Clipse’s feelings. On tracks like the opener, “Birds Don’t Sing,” they make that their prerogative. Traversing solemnly sentimental piano, Push and Malice trade icy menace for eternal love in a delicate letter to their dead parents. “I shared you with my friends, the pops they never had / You lived for our fishing trips — damn, I had a dad,” Malice raps, with his words spilling out as a longing reminiscence. You can almost hear an appreciative, wistful smile float through the condenser mic. Sandwiched by distorted vocal scratches, galloping percussion and John Legend’s customarily soulful hook, it sounds like the opening of heaven’s gates. Maybe their parents heard them.
Just a track later, on “Chains & Whips,” they’re once again the cutthroat spitters we know from “We Got It for Cheap.” Cruising a soundbed made for dystopian Westerns, Push and Malice serve up thick slabs of disdain for Jim Jones, who earned Pusha’s ire when he suggested the Clipse rapper shouldn’t have been on Vibe’s top 50 rappers list. Push’s taunting whisper of a delivery is sly and sadistic, with his soft voice and the space around it distilling his disgust in 4K: “Jealousy’s turnin’ into obsession / Reality TV is mud wrestlin’.” For his part, Kendrick matches Push and Malice’s viciousness with more outward venom, even if his verse feels more theatrical than cutting.
For “So Be It,” Push and Malice thread a Saudi Arabian sample with ruthless vignettes. The distorted, slow-motion sound feels like sinking quicksand, and the ornamental qanun strings are perfect for Abu Dhabi plug talk. Tapping into his “Story of Adidon” bag, Push frames a ruthless character assasination in icy matter of factness: “You cried in front of me, you died in front of me / You cried in front of me, you died in front of me / Calabasas took your bitch and your pride in front of me.” “So Be It” and “Ace Trumpets” are the height of Clipse’s precision. They’re also proof of a mutually fraternal understanding and fundamental mastery. It’s not a matter of where Clipse can’t go; one of the album’s few issues is where it won’t go.
“Let God Sort Em Out” is as tightly wound as it is stylish, subzero cool and relentless. But when it comes to rap GOATs, the smaller details matter — as do the big swings. Or lack thereof. At this level, the risks you don’t take become their own sort of micro flaws. The production here, and throughout the album, is spotless, but somewhat unimaginative; “P.O.V.” could have been produced anytime between “Fear of God” and “My Name Is My Name.” In the beginning of their ascension, Clipse rapped atop spaceships; let the trillions of lunchtable “Grindin” renditions serve as proof. There’s no “Wamp Wamp (What It Do)” here, and there’s definitely no “Mr. Me Too.” Instead, we’re left with monochrome: structurally accomplished, but only vaguely imaginative.
That doesn’t preclude any song from reaching full potential; it just keeps some of them out of absolute classic Push and Malice slaps. Two of the album’s mildly weaker tracks suffer from ham-fisted tropes. The hook for “So Far Ahead” is so empty and clumsily self-aggrandizing that it reminds you that its producer, Williams, released a LEGO movie about himself last year: “They don’t know what it is when I’m on it / But once they figure it out, I don’t want it / I’m so far ahead, n—s behind.” The otherwise beautiful “Grace of God” is similarly portentous; with only an adequate falsetto, P literalizes themes of criminal lore with all the finesse of a ChatGPT “Power” synopsis. It sounds fine, but the hook feels like a clique that got bored by their own mythology and retreated to assembly line song construction. As an album finale, the chorus simply feels undercooked.
Still, Push and Malice are simply too good to let intermittent sterility and a couple of dashed-off hooks derail the project. And what they lack in musical curiosity, they make up for in chemistry. From its aesthetics to its features, “Let God Sort Em Out” insists on its own importance. But with their technical excellence and evolved introspection, so do Pusha T and Malice. This isn’t “Lord Willin’” or “Hell Hath No Fury.” At this phase of their career, the brothers Clipse aren’t reimagining sonic boundaries. Just rapping their lives — very impressively — atop nearly as accomplished production. And if you’ve been waiting for another solid entry in the Clipse canon, you’ll take it. So be it.
