Is Drake to Blame for Clipse’s Album Delay?

Hip-hop fans who spent the weekend listening to Clipse’s exultant new single “Ace Trumpets” and feverishly wondering who’s to blame for the delay in the arrival of the duo’s long-awaited reunion album, Let God Sort Em Out, now have a place to direct their ire. In a new GQ profile of the Thornton brothers, Pusha T and Malice, the former revealed that the album’s planned 2024 release date was somehow yet another casualty of Drake and Kendrick Lamar’s feud that year. Per Pusha, the duo’s then–record label Def Jam got skittish about the inclusion of a Kendrick Lamar guest verse on album cut “Chains & Whips” because Def Jam’s parent company, UMG, was concerned about the optics of pairing Drake’s two biggest rap rivals, Pusha and Kendrick, on wax. (Drake is currently suing UMG — which happens to be his own record label — for allegedly boosting the popularity of Kendrick’s diss track “Not Like Us.”)

Pusha goes on to say that Def Jam instructed him to ask “Kendrick to censor his verse” or “take the record off” and that, when he refused, the parties began negotiations for Clipse (and Pusha T as a solo artist) to be dropped from Def Jam so they could shop the album elsewhere. Clipse eventually found a new home with Jay-Z’s Roc Nation, where the album is now set to arrive on July 11, with Kendrick’s guest verse on “Chains & Whips” thankfully intact. The silliest part of this saga? According to GQ, Kendrick doesn’t make so much as a glancing reference to his Drake beef.

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