\n<\/p>\n
\n\tIn the pantheon of prestige rap, it never gets fancier than a Clipse reunion. While Pusha T and Malice predated the whole \u201cplay this street rapper at New York Fashion Week\u201d motif, their stylishly spare soundscapes and high-brow dexterity made them couture rap before<\/em> couture rap. They could spit like a sleeker Little Brother, but there\u2019s a nihilistic thrill in the idea that they might sell coke to your little brother, too.<\/p>\n \n\tThey\u2019ve been relatively dormant since their \u201cTil the Casket Drops\u201d <\/em>album 16 years ago. Now, they\u2019re back together for their fourth album \u201cLet God Sort Em Out,\u201d and it\u2019s 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\u2019s a big deal, too \u2014 sometimes, perhaps, to their detriment. Laced with unfailingly sharp rapping, but dented by heavy-handed self-mythology and intermittently sterile Pharrell Williams beats, \u201cLet God Sort Em Out\u201d <\/em>is a well-executed album occasionally weighed down by its grandiosity. Ruthless and in control, it\u2019s also proof of a brotherly connection and fundamental mastery that can survive a generation-spanning hiatus.<\/p>\n \n\tSvelte yet heavy, Clipse\u2019s latest sees all their phonetic and poetical gifts rendered to subtly maximal effect, with their lithe vocals cresting Pharrell\u2019s glossy surfaces like snowfall. The brothers\u2019 voices can shift between callous drug lord or grateful son within the same song; their intonations can be decisively sinister (\u201cChains and Whips\u201d) or quietly grateful (\u201cBirds Don\u2019t Sing\u201d).\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tDespite the album title, God can\u2019t sort through everything \u2014 especially the Clipse\u2019s feelings. On tracks like the opener, \u201cBirds Don\u2019t Sing,\u201d 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. \u201cI shared you with my friends, the pops they never had \/ You lived for our fishing trips \u2014 damn, I had a dad,\u201d 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\u2019s customarily soulful hook, it sounds like the opening of heaven\u2019s gates. Maybe their parents heard them.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tJust a track later, on \u201cChains & Whips,\u201d they\u2019re once again the cutthroat spitters we know from \u201cWe Got It for Cheap.\u201d Cruising a soundbed made for dystopian Westerns, Push and Malice serve up thick slabs of disdain for Jim Jones, who earned Pusha\u2019s ire when he suggested the Clipse rapper shouldn\u2019t have been on Vibe\u2019s top 50 rappers list. Push\u2019s taunting whisper of a delivery is sly and sadistic, with his soft voice and the space around it distilling his disgust in 4K: \u201cJealousy\u2019s turnin\u2019 into obsession \/ Reality TV is mud wrestlin\u2019.\u201d For his part, Kendrick matches Push and Malice\u2019s viciousness with more outward venom, even if his verse feels more theatrical than cutting.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tFor \u201cSo Be It,\u201d 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 \u201cStory of Adidon\u201d bag, Push frames a ruthless character assasination in icy matter of factness: \u201cYou 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.\u201d <\/strong>\u201cSo Be It\u201d and \u201cAce Trumpets\u201d are the height of Clipse\u2019s precision. They\u2019re also proof of a mutually fraternal understanding and fundamental mastery. It\u2019s not a matter of where Clipse can\u2019t go; one of the album\u2019s few issues is where it won\u2019t go.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cLet God Sort Em Out\u201d is as tightly wound as it is stylish, subzero cool and relentless. But when it comes to rap GOATs, the smaller details matter \u2014 as do the big swings. Or lack thereof. At this level, the risks you don\u2019t take become their own sort of micro flaws. The production here, and throughout the album, is spotless, but somewhat unimaginative; \u201cP.O.V.\u201d could have been produced anytime between \u201cFear of God\u201d and \u201cMy Name Is My Name.\u201d In the beginning of their ascension, Clipse rapped atop spaceships; let the trillions of lunchtable \u201cGrindin\u201d renditions serve as proof. There\u2019s no \u201cWamp Wamp (What It Do)\u201d here, and there\u2019s definitely no \u201cMr. Me Too.\u201d Instead, we\u2019re left with monochrome: structurally accomplished, but only vaguely imaginative.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tThat doesn\u2019t 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\u2019s mildly weaker tracks suffer from ham-fisted tropes. The hook for \u201cSo Far Ahead\u201d is so empty and clumsily self-aggrandizing that it reminds you that its producer, Williams, released a LEGO movie about himself last year: \u201cThey don\u2019t know what it is when I\u2019m on it \/ But once they figure it out, I don\u2019t want it \/ I\u2019m so far ahead, n\u2014s behind.\u201d The otherwise beautiful \u201cGrace of God\u201d is similarly portentous; with only an adequate falsetto, P literalizes themes of criminal lore with all the finesse of a ChatGPT \u201cPower\u201d <\/em>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.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tStill, Push and Malice are simply too good to let intermittent sterility and <\/strong>a couple of dashed-off hooks derail the project. <\/strong>And what they lack in musical curiosity, they make up for in chemistry. From its aesthetics to its features, \u201cLet God Sort Em Out\u201d insists on its own importance. But with their technical excellence and evolved introspection, so do Pusha T and Malice. This isn\u2019t \u201cLord Willin\u2019\u201d or \u201cHell Hath No Fury.\u201d At this phase of their career, the brothers Clipse aren\u2019t reimagining sonic boundaries. Just rapping their lives \u2014 very impressively\u00a0\u2014 atop nearly as accomplished production. And if you\u2019ve been waiting for another solid entry in the Clipse canon, you\u2019ll take it. So be it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In the pantheon of prestige rap, it never gets fancier than a Clipse reunion. While Pusha T and Malice predated the whole \u201cplay this street rapper at New York Fashion Week\u201d 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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10575,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[299,3594,1519,3597,1085,3595,3596],"class_list":{"0":"post-10574","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-album","9":"tag-clipses","10":"tag-god","11":"tag-intense","12":"tag-review","13":"tag-sort","14":"tag-stylish"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10574","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10574"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10574\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10575"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10574"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10574"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10574"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}