If Pharrell has a big event going down, it’s a safe bet you’ll see Clipse cofounder Pusha T, his longtime friend and collaborator, there showing support. Last year, at P’s inaugural show as the Creative Director of Louis Vuitton, Pusha did double duty, walking in the show with his brother Malice and debuting a new Clipse banger as part of the show’s soundtrack—one of their first songs as the Clipse in over a decade, and one of the surest signs that a reunion was on the horizon. So it should come as no shock that today at the LV Spring/Summer 2025 show in Paris, the Thornton brothers dropped another heater. But the song’s subject may take some by surprise.
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It’s a running gag amongst hip-hop fans that when it comes to lyrical content, Pusha T has a one-track mind, and that track is a neverending slalom down a mountain of the purest powder. If Push was the subject of that What’s On Your Mind meme, his thought bubble would be a box of Arm & Hammer and a pristine pot bubbling with boiling hot water. Cocaine is a hell of a drug, and for the better part of two decades, Pusha T has found endless ways to cleverly rap about how selling bricks has turned his opulent tastes into an everyday reality.
It’s somewhat reductive, of course; play “Sunshine” or “40 Acres” as examples of great non-drug Push songs, off top. But it’s a joke that he’s pretty much leaned into—his 2022 lead single was “Diet Coke,” on an album called It’s Almost Dry—and his argument is, why shouldn’t he? You wouldn’t tell Tom Brady to take up golf, or scoff at Martin Scorsese making another crime epic. When I once countered that Scorsese actually does stray away from crime quite often with something like, say, The Age of Innocence, Push’s retort was that he made “Ma, I Don’t Love Her”—a saccharine “for-the-ladies” track that he and his brother Malice begrudgingly recorded for their debut Clipse album, and a song Push is not shy about admitting his disdain for.
Since his brother semi-retired from rap around 2010, Push has been doing what he does best at a very high level, mostly on his own. But for the past two years, the Clipse reunion vibes have slowly but surely reached a fever pitch, starting with Malice’s excellent guest verse on It’s Almost Dry. This new song will fan those flames—but what’s interesting about it is there’s nary a bar referencing drug dealing or crime of any kind across its three-minute runtime. Instead the emotional, contemplative track—produced by Pharrell, with a rousing chorus from John Legend—is dedicated to their parents, both of whom passed away recently and quite close together. (Their mother passed November 2021, followed by their father just four months later.)
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