Why Clipse and Pharrell Want A Grammy For Acclaimed New Album: ‘You Don’t Play The Game Just To Get A Participation Trophy’

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In 2009, hip-hop was astatine an inflection point. Veterans similar Eminem and Jay-Z scored Billboard Hot 100 No. 1s, Kanye West and Lil Wayne enjoyed their imperial phases, a caller procreation of endowment began to emergence done blogs — and Clipse, the Virginia-bred rap duo of brothers Pusha T and Malice, released its 3rd album, Til the Casket Drops.

Sixteen years passed — an eternity by rap’s standards — arsenic Pusha T became a palmy solo creator and statement enforcement portion Malice took a hiatus from rapping to prosecute his faith. But successful July, Clipse reunited and yet dropped different album: Let God Sort Em Out.

Already a blockbuster hip-hop release, the task wouldn’t person been a existent reunion without chap Virginian Pharrell Williams successful the premix arsenic producer. As one-half of The Neptunes, helium lent his cosmic sonic canvas to Pusha T and Malice’s coke-laced raps, poignant storytelling and opulent flexes connected their 3 2000s-era albums — and successful the years pursuing Til the Casket Drops, helium became a household sanction acknowledgment to his enactment successful music, film, TV and fashion. This clip around, Pharrell invited Clipse to Louis Vuitton office successful Paris, wherever helium serves arsenic men’s originative director, to meticulously trade their cinematic reintroduction implicit sessions that spanned 2 years. With a No. 4 bow connected the Billboard 200 — Clipse’s highest people since its 2002 debut, Lord Willin’ — the task arrived to captious acclaim and medium of the twelvemonth chatter. And, successful the process, the trio of ’70s babies punctured the story that rap is simply a young man’s sport.

“I’ve ever looked astatine rap and different genres, stone specifically, and I’ve ne'er liked however rap ever had the property ceiling wherever everyone other didn’t,” Pusha T, 48, tells Billboard during a telephone with Malice and Pharrell arsenic Clipse’s circuit autobus heads to Detroit. “I’ve personally ever wanted to marque it my concern to ace that ceiling, and I deliberation the Clipse medium 1,000% [did it].”

“Martin Scorsese made The Irishman not excessively agelong ago,” adds Pharrell, 52, referencing the 2019 movie by the now-82-year-old filmmaking legend. “You don’t halt being great. You mightiness determine not to proceed to stock your acquisition with the world. But large is great.”

After paying 7 figures successful June to exit its woody with Def Jam (the enactment refused the label’s petition to censor Kendrick Lamar’s featured verse connected Let God Sort Em Out), Clipse seamlessly transitioned to Roc Nation for organisation and went connected to present 1 of the much memorable rollouts successful caller rap history, with KAWS-designed screen art, a Carhartt merchandise collaboration and adjacent a runway quality astatine a Louis Vuitton manner amusement with Jay-Z and Beyoncé successful the beforehand row.

Amid it all, this summer, Clipse embarked connected its archetypal circuit successful implicit 15 years — and past flew to Rome to go the archetypal hip-hop artists to execute astatine the Vatican, playing to a assemblage of a quarter-million arsenic portion of Grace for the World, a performance co-directed by Pharrell. Next April, the enactment volition marque its Coachella debut. “This is thing that you couldn’t program for by nary agelong of the imagination,” says Malice, 53.

But contempt each these wins, Pusha T, Malice and Pharrell person their sights acceptable connected different accolade: a Grammy Award successful 2026. While the decorated Pharrell has earned 13 of them, Clipse ne'er has; the duo’s lone information is for featuring connected Justin Timberlake’s “Like I Love You” successful 2003, and Pusha T has 5 solo noms. Pharrell hopes Clipse tin execute the tearful Let God Sort Em Out opener “The Birds Don’t Sing” astatine the awards and that they tin grant their parents with a Grammy win. “You got radical who get them and pee connected them, and we ain’t doing nary of that,” Pharrell jokes. “We privation them for our parents.”