A Culturally Inappropriate Cultural Moment
A Cinematic Masterpiece in 13 Scenes
[Tone: Amazed & Direct]
I didn’t rush to write this appraisal of Clipse’s album “Let God Sort Em Out.” I stand on my product the same way Pusha T and Malice stand on theirs. In 2025, they flooded the streets and became the plugs for the year’s cultural moment. I asked myself, “How could I summon my inner Clipse and write a culturally inappropriate piece about this culturally inappropriate album?” The process began by summoning my “Yuugh” (Pusha T adlib), talking to the Panther God “Bast” to cover me, double-checking that my Mamba Mentality was configured correctly, and here we go. By the way, I wrote this by the ocean (Pusha T voice).
I respect the subjectiveness of art and a muggle’s decision to like or not like an art piece. On the dead homies, you’re bonkers if you don’t think this album is at least good. This album is a precise blend of purpose, culture, life experience, pain, and disgust, powered by metaphor. This work ain’t eva been stepped on. The potency is bonkers.
Less cultured listeners will be reductive and call the album “coke rap,” and yes, they get their Dope Boy bars off, and Lord knows that is a surface-level take. This is Dope Boy literature annotated by poets at the zenith of their cooking skills. You got toddler ears, and this album ain’t for you. Surface-level swimmers have a plethora of albums to listen to. The verses are wrapped in unreleased Pharrell-designed Louis Vuitton, griffin fur, and the finest thread from Atlantis.
The Consistency G-d and The Philosopher
Pusha T is The Consistency G-d, and if rapping were a culinary discipline, Push is a multi-certified Michelin-star chef. Malice is the philosopher who activates ancestral memory, offering two opposing ideas in a single bar. An artisan of words with no filler, he creates rich, marrow-deep, audible paintings with spiritual precision. You want to hear his internal rhymes, he gives metaphors that make me stop, stand up, and then look to the sky to wonder how such vivid imagery was painted without paint.
Synesthetic Heaven
For context, I have the wonderful gift of synesthesia, which manifests as I see colors when I hear sounds. Let God Sort Em Out is a synesthetic heaven. Pharrell went inside his secret LEGO Louis Vuitton Courrier Lozine 110 and conjured the most lush, vivid, vibrant, and intentional soundscapes I had ever heard. I could see blood reds, silvers that were rich in reflectivity. It felt like I was visiting the mythical Silver City. I was dumbfounded at my first listen; my vision was overwhelmed, and I loved every moment. Every beat switch-up, the fantastic way the chords evoke drama, and how each track is grandiose, could be a short film filled with tension on a biblical level. The songs that make up Let God Sort Em Out are haute couture spirituals.
A Bold Beginning
The album begins with a bold track, “The Birds Don’t Sing.” The duo showcases unexpected vulnerability, grief, and love, sharing their last conversations with the parents. Pusha T shares a discussion with their Mother and Malice with their father. (Quick aside, I’ve been trying to cry more for the last two years, and this song got me to shed three tears.) It is impressive to hear two African American/Black men being open and expressing their emotions about loss. The production is tight, and, like all the other tracks, Pharrell chooses restraint, starting with sparse piano and then adding John Legend’s voice, which is warm, comforting, yet aching. The Voices of Fire choir hover behind them like ancestral judges and angels, gently underscoring the grief. You feel the weight of each breath. You feel the absence. The birds don’t sing because their voices—the ones that taught them life, resilience, survival—are gone. Pharrell ensures that the duo’s voices are treated as the primary instruments. Malice’s bars felt comforting, and this was my favorite to hear because it reminded me of my Ogs’ (Grandma & Grandpa, who died roughly a month apart from each other)
“The way you missed Mama, I guess I should've known
Chivalry ain't dead, you ain't let her go alone.”
Malice
Sheeeeeesh! Shoutout to PaPa Clipse for being with his lady beyond the grave. Just beautiful, and a clever and cunning way to start the album.
Making Django Proud
The second track is Chains & Whips: A state of the union for hip-hop. A lyrical reckoning. A holy war in couture. This song ain’t just music—it’s a blistering address to the nation of rap. The flows? Clinical. The sound? Militaristic soul. The message? There’s no salvation without confrontation. This track is a cultural earthquake—a thunderous check-in from three rap savants who step into the booth with spiritual urgency. Clipse and Kendrick don’t just rap. They evaluate, eulogize, and eradicate.
The tone is surgical and judgmental. Clipse is reminding the game that they’re not to be played with, and Kendrick? He’s handing out sonic booms and scripture in the same breath. There’s no clout-chasing allowed in this cipher, only conviction. This joint has layers. Originally previewed during Pharrell’s Louis Vuitton Men’s Spring-Summer 2024 Show, “Chains & Whips” didn’t even include Kendrick’s verse yet. Which, let’s be real, already made the song feel dangerous. But when Kendrick’s final verse got added? That danger went nuclear. What happened next is now rap folklore. Def Jam, the Clipse’s former label, a subsidiary of Universal Music Group, caught a case of mark ass buster. Kendrick’s verse, righteous, blunt, and unfiltered, was too potent and too close to UMG’s ongoing lawsuit with Drake. They asked Clipse to alter it. Water it down. Sanitize the Boogeyman.
Clipse said HELL to the NAH. They don’t make products that ain’t pure, and they for damn sure don’t sell something stepped on. They stood twenty toes (they’re a duo) down and took the independent route, spending seven figures to free themselves from Def Jam. All so that this song—uncut, unbothered, undiluted—could exist. That’s what happens when you own your art, have principles, and ain’t afraid to burn a bridge if the bridge is built on bullshit or cowardice. Push begins with the hook.
“Beat the system with chains and whips.”
It is chilling and brilliant. I’m calling this a legacy flex. Acknowledging generational warfare, talking about symbols of oppression, and flipping them into weapons of success. Then he glides into a flow colder than his custom Saint Lazarus chain:
“You run from the spirit of repossession / Too much enamel covers your necklace…”
“Crush you to pieces, I’ll hum a breath of it / I will close your Heaven for the hell of it.”
Mans raps like a vengeful Hip-Hop spirit that is wearing Louis Vuitton, Biggie’s Jesus Piece, and holding a microphone made by Saint Mary. Every bar is an observation or threat wrapped in critique. He can’t believe how y’all muggles are running around outside with no sense. He’s using a fine-tooth comb to pull out the fake and measure it against Clipse’s real. He could be angry, but he’s not yelling. King Push is snatching masks off. Malice gives a sermon in a storm on this song. When I meet him, I would like insight into his mind, because he speaks with a calm tone that paints imagery of ruthlessness. Malice packed out Thor, took Mjölnir, and he is now Thunder.
“Money’s dried up like a cuticle / You’re gaspin’ for air now, it’s beautiful.”
“This the darkest that I ever been / The diamonds make you taste peppermint.”
His bars feel like prophecy filtered through trauma. There’s death here. There’s scripture. Malice is watching from a distance, letting consequences play out. He makes it clear: he’s not just rapping about what was done, he’s reminding you who survived it.
The Revenant reference? Chef’s kiss. Cold. Isolated. Dangerous. Just like this verse.
COMPTON IN DA HOUSE?! (context, I’m born and raised in Compton). Kendrick (The Boogeyman) is the physical manifestation of righteous fire rhyming. Imma keep it a buck. His verse isn’t simply a feature; it’s a spiritual event. He opens the verse with deliberate tension:
“I’m not the candidate to vibe with / I don’t f*** with the kumbaya s***.”
As we progress into the verse, we get a sublime “gen” cascade—words connected not just by sound, but by meaning and metaphor.
“The two-time Gemini with the genocide / I’m generous, however you want it, I’ll be the gentle kind…”
“Every song is the book of Genesis, let the sonics boom…”
“They said I couldn’t reach Gen Z, you f***in’ dickheads…”
It’s genocide, gentleman, general, Genesis, genius, genetics, gentrified, ginseng, ginger root, genitals, and more.
That’s rhyme as a theme. That’s poetry with a war face on. He ends it with divine violence:
“Trump card told me not to spare your life, motherf***er.”
That ain’t just a punchline. That’s judgment day in one bar.
Pharrell’s production is cold elegance. Pharrell’s beat is martial, minimal, and haunting. It doesn’t knock so much as stalk. It’s all space and restrained menace, just enough to let the verses cut through like straight razors on marble floors. Even the post-chorus, with Pharrell’s eerie refrain—
“…then you realize / that the devil is talkin’ to you”
— Sounds like a ghost whispering into your AirPods.
This ain’t just about Kendrick’s verse—it’s about generational audacity. The way Clipse and K.Dot move? That’s genius without gimmicks, generosity without gentleness, and genealogy without guilt. They spit like their genetics were coded for judgment, like each verse was a page torn from Genesis, edited with vengeance, and recited under a chandelier of consequences.
This track doesn’t care about your genre—it’s got general energy, genderless truth, and gentrified tension. It ain’t polite. It’s not polished. It’s postured with purpose. They generate heat, gentrify fear, and hand out bars that hit harder than a Gendarme after a raw shot of ginseng on judgment day. So to the frauds, fakes, phonies, and “content creators” cosplaying as MCs? Don’t get too comfortable. This wasn’t for you. This was a generational cleansing—a gentle reminder: God gave them the gift and the go-ahead.
Let God sort 'em out.
Talking from their Perspective
Each verse on “P.O.V..” is confrontational couture. Three different angles, one unified flex. This is perspective poetry for those who love rappers who rap. Let’s talk about range because “P.O.V.” is one of those rare tracks where every artist approaches the mic from their own lived altitude and still manages to speak in unison. The song drips with quiet contempt for trends, clout, and imitation. It’s a performance piece in designer grime, allowing the listener to peek through the keyhole into how elite minds operate in a culture that rewards mimicry over mastery.
This beat is mood lighting and sharp corners. Pharrell laced it with space and sneer, giving just enough room for baritone brilliance and stoic flexing. The moment the beat drops, the tone is clear: this ain’t for everybody. KingPin Push gives lyrical finesse with surgical dismissal. I don’t know if he's talking to Jim Jones, and I will say HOT DAMN. This man redlined some résumés.
“All I see is 60-day stars and 20-year thousandaires / Not enough shoppin’, whole lot of browsingaires”
That “aires” rhyme scheme? Cold as ice and stank face inducing for me. It’s like he’s crafting a new taxonomy of clout chasers—browsingaires, hostingaires, falconaires—and deleting them line by line. He went “command+F” on his keyboard to find every annoying “aire” and Nino Brown cancel ‘em. This verse is vintage Push but retooled for the now. He’s not just swinging, he’s sweeping the room. Every line is a reminder that while the industry was busy chasing streams, he’s been building a legacy with lethal intent. He makes you feel the distance between survival and style, between the charted and the chosen.
“My reinvention, I know you thinkin’ how’s it fair / You stream kings but you never fit a crowd in there”
Damn (Kevin Hart voice). A reminder that a billion streams don’t equal presence. Push snatched the music algorithm’s wig and walked away with it as a trophy. And the delivery? Crisp. Aloof. A voice that knows its name echoes in rooms he doesn’t even enter anymore. He raps like he already won the argument and just showed up to hand you the transcript.
Tyler, The Creator is the current King of Jiggy Rap! Tyler lets you know that he is weatherproof, and he delivers performance art, dropping two lines of bars that reek of “try me.”
“I got deaf and blind bitches trying to see what it do
Little feature, niggas threaten to sue me?”
He mocks the desperate, the irrationally sensitive, and reactive with a smile. Then proceeds to give smooth couplets, letting listeners know he’s built differently.
“That number ain’t bread to me / That million is crumbs / You niggas is bums”
The math is straightforward. And a reminder that Tyler no longer lives in the same fiscal or creative universe as most of the rap game. He’s unbothered, unfazed, and unfiltered.
You feel that? That’s soft power with sting. That’s Gangsta Garland energy. And then he pulls back the curtain completely:
“I need God to play the lead in my biopic
The curse of the zeros
When you become the Devil or the tap dancing negro”
He’s self-aware. He’s self-critical. He’s allergic to simplicity. That closing run—“outgrow my heroes, come get with me,” isn’t ego. It’s ascension. It’s an invitation to level up or stay out of the way.
Then there’s Malice, returning with the real. Malice closes the track with spiritual intelligence and criminal clarity. He’s seen too much to be impressed, and his bars reflect a man who’s wrestled with truth long enough to need punchlines no longer.
“I was the only one to walk away and really be free”
That’s a reminder. That’s not up for debate.
“As far as I’m concerned, I do really be he
I can open up my closet with a skeleton key”
Wordplay so clean it feels preordained. He’s not just addressing what he’s done—he’s acknowledging what it cost.
“Came back for the money, that’s the Devil in me
Had to hide it from the church, that’s the Jekyll in me”
The duality is on full display. He’s not hiding his contradictions. He’s cataloging them for your reference. And this closer?
“Niggas chains look just like oppression to me”
That’s not a metaphor. That’s a mic drop wrapped in a sermon. It redefines the flex. It dares you to ask what your style is saying about your soul. This isn’t a posse cut. It’s a perspective summit. And what they build together is bigger than bars—it’s a blueprint for where the culture could go if it stopped pandering to the lowest bidder. They don’t just rhyme—they redefine.
4. So Be It
It isn’t a diss. It’s not just rap. It’s a cinematic confrontation, a stylistic execution without gory visuals. Pusha T doesn’t curse. He consecrates conflict. Malice doesn’t preach. He catalogs consequences. Pharrell channels ancient incantation into bassline strings that wail like a confession, Arabian flourishes swirl around Malice and Push as they dissect loyalty, betrayal, and a specific breach of codes (we know who). You feel like you’re entering a gallery with portraits of past sins and future ass whippings.
My favorite bar(s) from this track come from Malice with crystalline duality:
“Came back for the money… Devil in me. Had to hide it from the church… Jekyll in me.”
He’s repenting while raging—walking contradictions layered over Pharrell’s haunted steeple beat. Every bar cuts like prayer beads snapping under pressure. There is no filler. Each line is permission to accept the fallout. So. Be it.
5. Ace Trumpets
This track embodies masterclass minimalism and supreme arrogance, presented as high-couture street opera. Pharrell's beat is designed for psychological warfare: the rimshot snare cracks like breaking glass, deep bass reverberates in your chest, and a synth drone warbles like a luxurious tornado siren. It's elegant yet unwelcoming— akin to stepping into a palace that despises visitors. Push returns with razor-sharp wordplay and multi-syllabic rhymes that feel like silk gloves over brass knuckles. He’s a lyrical sculptor of wealth and warning. Malice does steal the show for me, the Nirvana reference.
“Drugs killed my teen spirit, welcome to Nirvana.”
He weaves so many double entendres that need to be put in a temperature-controlled museum room. His delivery is unhurried and undeniable. Clipse doesn’t just rap on this song; they return to build more on their legacy.
Favorite Bar:
“White glove service with the brick, I am Luigi.”
- Pusha T
6. All Things Considered
This is Clipse at their most emotionally exposed and lyrically surgical—a rare moment where the flex makes space for the fracture. Pusha opens with a verse that feels like a prayer said through gritted teeth. There’s vulnerability tucked inside the bar work: miscarriages, fatherhood, grief dodged by innocence. Yet he doesn’t abandon the corner for the cradle—he threads both:
“Preorder the strollers / Our face in it / I pays for my stork wit’ the baby in it.”
Push makes the personal mythic. Then he pivots, no warning, into grimy vengeance:
“Turn niggas statistics, I’m so sadistic.”
Only Clipse can put pain and pressure in the same stanza and make both sound like gospel. He’s not seeking redemption; he’s refining his ruthlessness.
Malice pulls up with the kind of verse that feels like a eulogy for his old self. The rhyme scheme is tight, but the storytelling breathes:
“Writings was on the wall, like hieroglyphics / My circle split up the pie, that’s long division.”
He chronicles sins by the pound, soul fractures by the ounce. This ain’t just autobiography, it’s forensic documentation. He walks us through jail visits, dead homies, and spiritual fatigue without flinching. The closer hits like scripture: “The only sin left is to flirt with vengeance.” That’s not just a line. That’s a creed. A warning. A benediction. Clipse aren’t reflecting here—they’re reckoning. And every word is weighted.
Favorite Bar(s):
“Richard's replace all the Pasha's / Dior slides made of iguana / Stuff the walls for tomorrow / Fuck I look like tryna borrow
Skateboard P gotta chill.
7. M.T.B.T.T.F.
These gents are maniacs. The acronym is shorthand for Mike Tyson Blow To The Face! WHY SO SERIOUS (Heath Ledger Joker voice). I lost my mind when I heard that damn chorus. This song is a luxury execution scene. Pusha T opens with a flurry of internal rhymes so tight they suffocate. Lines double back, sharpen, and slice:
“Poker faces keep ’em guessin’, no expression / Ice dressing on my chest and leave impression...”
He’s rapping in armor, emotions vacuum-sealed under chains. But the flexes aren’t for show—they’re weighted with generational contradiction:
“White slavemaster souls in my safe.”
That line is chilling. He knows what he’s inherited and what he’s reclaimed. The verse vacillates between coded street commerce and metaphysical math, with Push playing both priest and predator. Even the hook weaponizes lust and luxury—“Mike Tyson blow to the face” becomes both a coke metaphor and a prophecy of violence wrapped in seduction.
Malice enters with the calm menace of a man who’s seen it all and no longer flinches.
“You niggas is screenwriters, we dream writers.”
He’s separating the real from industry cosplay. Then he bends time with:
“Only 300 bricks can make you Leonidas.”
It’s classical myth reimagined through cartel math. His verse is full of righteous violence, philosophical ego, and biblical ambiguity.
“Selling dope is a religion / The hammer’s in position.”
Malice isn’t glorifying it—he’s bearing witness to it. This isn’t a comeback. It’s a judgment. And with every bar, Clipse proves they still write scripture with gunpowder in the margins.
8. E.B.I.T.D.A.
This joint feels like a marble boardroom that has been transported into a trap church. Pharrell’s beat is sleek, opulent, and eerily sparse. Like the echo right before a stock drops or a brick lands. It’s minimal, but menacing—no bassline overpowering, just clean space for capitalism and confession in the same breath. Pusha steps in with a merger-and-acquisition flow, using corporate language to wrap criminal intent in couture.
“Now I’m ten times the E.B.I.T.D.A / If you let the money talk, who speaking up?”
He’s flipping financial lingo into a baptism, letting bars drip with ice and indictment. The rhymes stay tight: “seat is up,” “dream enough,” “steep enough”—and still, his tone is surgical. No filler. Just filleting lies and layering threats.
9. F.I.C.O.
I’m personally placing Pharrell on Citizen’s Arrest whenever I meet him. Beats like this have to come with safety earplugs, goggles, and something blessed by G-d. I was minding my bidness, walking along the beach, and the moment that bass hit me, my Wakandan ancestors punched me in the gut and I audibly yelled “AAAMEEENNN!”
The production feels primal and in opposition to itself. Meaning it is raw and polished. The drums hit the make your head nod button in your body. This is white-collar crime in surround sound. Pharrell left air pockets in the mix so the tension could breathe. He builds a skeleton for the verses to flex around, letting Pusha, Malice, and Stove God Cooks sound like they’re passing confidential files in the booth.
The chant sound (I’m not sure if that is a sample or not) hits the tribalism button in your body, and Stove God Cooks perfectly cooks this beat. He floats all over this track, and I need another Stove God Cooks project A$AP Now. It’s not just a beat. It’s an audit. Every sound choice is as intentional as an offshore bank account. Pharrell turned the track into a money laundering operation for trauma and flexes—and it’s flawless.
This is my favorite track on the album. The uninhibited entity in me (Lord V, I’ll talk about him at a later date) was fighting for control of our body when this track came on. Pusha opens like he’s narrating from the back of a bulletproof Rolls.
“Moving weight was like lipo.”
That’s surgical slang wrapped in Wall Street talk. And the bars only tighten from there—he maps betrayal, poverty, and paranoia across a landscape of tightrope metaphors and repo man threats. His verse weaponizes memory, folding in a psycho-social profile of survival:
“Waiting on faith ain’t for us.”
He raps from the hard-earned belief that prayer without plan is a suicide pact.
Stove God Cooks floats in like the ghost of Pyrex past—his hook is haunting.
“Wit’ a fetti so strong you gotta bag it wit’ one eye closed”
That’s street science. He doesn’t just sing the chorus; he testifies it. His voice cracks with soul, but never pity. It’s that kitchen gospel—fresh off the stove with the scent of risk still clinging to it.
“Drop the roof on you niggas, let the inside out.”
That ain’t just a flex. That’s an autopsy on opulence.
Then Malice comes in as the embodiment of the Book of Revelation, wearing a shiesty.
“Used to call me Windex ’cause this thing I spray gon’ make you change minds”
The puns are violent, clever, and efficient. His verse is full of cautionary tales tucked into the compartments of an 18-wheeler driving cross country..
“Every Stringer Bell just needs an Avon.”
He’s not name-dropping; he’s giving us a coded index of the underworld. The DMV, the turnpike, Miami, Faizon—he creates a map of real weight moved with real intention. This ain’t clout. This is court-admissible poetry.
On “F.I.C.O.,” Clipse and Stove God Cooks take financial literacy and flip it into a felony hymn. The production lets every syllable hit like a ledger entry written in blood.
10. Inglorious Bastards
This song feels like it got mixed on some ancient Parisian countertops with cartel burner phones nearby. “Inglorious Bastards” is a Clipse classic—opulent, militant, and culturally inappropriate by design. The beat is cinematic but grimy, like Barry Lyndon filmed in a crackhouse. Pharrell’s production loops feel luxurious, letting each verse sound like it’s being carved into imported stone.
Pusha opens the track like a preacher in a money-laundering megachurch. He’s in the kitchen, but it’s no longer just Pyrex and baking soda—it’s elevated. It’s
“whiter than the Pope’s” aprons and “Colombian stallions in a stable.” The rhyme patterns resemble battle formations.
“Watching Tiafoe with the Open / That’s the only back and forth that I’m posting”
It’s not just a tennis bar, it’s a statement of authority. He’s too regal for monkey dancing. He’s Moses with a money counter and a frozen anchor chain.
The hook slaps with subtext:
“Tell me is we trafficking or trickin’, somebody gotta show me the difference.”
It’s duality in a single couplet. The luxury lifestyle appears the same, but intent reveals the difference between those who are truly elite and those who chase after status.
Malice gotta chill. His verses are akin to a Kaiju casually walking around Tokyo, knocking everything down.
“Under my boots, nigga, nothing but goat shit.”
That’s not just a flex–it’s a career retrospective. He’s Rick James stomping on lesser legacies. His verse is a mix of blue-collar taruma and Prancing Horse Ferrari spirituality. “That thinking got me standing on this podium” is the Clipse gospel—survival turned to sermon.
Ab-Liva rounds out the verse like a high-stakes ghost in a comfy ass Louis Tracksuit. He’s Iceberg Slim meets Abu Dhabi oil baron.
“Been playin’ in the snow like Rudolph”
might be the coldest opening of any verse on the album, and the Umar/white seats bar? Offensive in the best way. That’s Clipse and friends at their most disruptive—wearing Parisian silk and saying the unsayable.
This song is a lavish indictment, a coked-out sermon for the spiritually scarred. There’s no hooky melody or dance break—just verses sharpened like stiletto knives and the Clipse daring you to blink.
“Inglorious Bastards” doesn’t just walk a tightrope—it flosses on it.
11. So Far Ahead
This one floats—like the ghost of the block looking down from a G6. Pharrell’s beat feels ethereal, a luxurious daydream of being untouchably distant. The synths shimmer like sunlight bending off a chrome spoiler, while the drums slap just soft enough to let the paranoia creep in. It’s trap for the elite—a paranoid lullaby for those who’ve made it out but know the shadows still follow.
Pusha T opens with bars that feel like encrypted wisdom for the already-initiated. “Still ain’t never hit a pothole”—he’s not just swerving, he’s gliding past pitfalls that would’ve crushed lesser men. That Griner/Chapo line? Disrespectful excellence. And he keeps turning keys into philosophies:
“Understand the art of war / All my niggas draw, so we all Picasso’s.”
He’s a tactician with a Pyrex palette. Every metaphor is war-ready, and every simile snaps like a sealed vacuum bag.
Then Malice steps in and does what only Malice can: mix gospel with grit like he’s writing Psalms with gunpowder ink. His bars are haunted:
“Same hands I used to whip work / See me turn ‘em both into blessings.”
That ain’t just clever, it’s transformational theology. He references “both Mason Betha’s,” invoking both preacher and player, then ends with a prayer disguised as a Tesla autopilot line: “Let God take the wheel like a Tesla.” Malice isn’t rapping, he’s testifying with the cadence of someone who’s outrun damn near everything—except the past.
“So Far Ahead” isn’t about flossing—it’s about the loneliness of lapping the competition. The hook reveals the cost of innovation: by the time they get it, Clipse is already gone. Left the trap, left the trends, and left the door open just long enough for us to realize we’re still playing catch-up.
This is how legends stretch the genre without snapping it.
12. Let God Sort Em Out/Chandeliers
This one? Not a song—an execution. Pharrell crafts a score that’s equal parts noir opera and luxury war chant, giving Clipse and Nas a cathedral to spill blood in. The beat thumps like it is inside a bulletproof vest, dressed in opulence and danger. It’s half trap, half séance, all consequence.
Pusha T opens the first verse like he’s reading your eulogy aloud at your own wake.
“Bring all the watches and the chains out / Heat come, I’m De Niro, I got the safe house.”
Bars stunt and threaten. And when Malice joins, he raises the stakes to spiritual warfare.
“Coke spots all over like leprosy / It’s a dark spirit tucked behind the flesh you see.”
This ain’t rap—it’s biblical. These aren’t bars—they’re plagues. Every word feels like a commandment scratched into the street pavement.
The flow between Pusha and Malice is so fluid, it reminds you they share blood. They lace luxury references “Berlinetta horse power… LV leather goods” with prophetic dread “Soul leave your body like a fentanyl rush”—a terrifying reminder that even the flyest coffin is still a coffin.
Then Nas enters with imperial calm—a sultan delivering a final decree. He doesn’t rap to compete, he raps to correct the record.
“Single-handedly boosted rap to its truest place… I alone did rejuvenate.”
These bars aren’t defensive—they’re declarative. He puts himself next to Clipse in a throne room made of verses.
“Bring AKs on vacays when we paddle canoes”
is luxury paranoia, and “rockin’ chandeliers” becomes the final flex: both a status symbol and a chandelier of hanging bodies. He ain’t just shining—he’s haunting. This is a closing statement for a case that’s already been won, a reckoning for anyone who ever doubted Clipse’s staying power or Nas’s divine pen. No chorus needed. No hook strong enough to interrupt.
Let God Sort ’Em Out ain’t a metaphor. It’s a warning.
And the chandelier? That’s your light going out.
13. By The Grace Of God
This is a closing prayer with blood on its hands and heaven in its eyes. This ain’t just an outro—it’s a final confession at the edge of consequence. “By The Grace Of God” closes the album with Malice and Pusha T staring death, guilt, and survival square in the eye, reflecting not with bravado but with burdened clarity. Pharrell’s production is solemn and cinematic—like a funeral procession scored with violins made of smoke. The drums are reserved, the atmosphere reverent. It feels like church for the condemned.
Malice opens like a man revisiting every ghost in his Rolodex.
“Cleaning out your closet / The one you kept your demons in”
isn’t just wordplay—it’s therapy in 16 bars. He raps from the precipice of survivor’s guilt, lamenting dead homies, snitching codefendants, and the false gods of luxury that cost too much to worship. He doesn’t glorify—he grieves. It’s Malice the mortal, not just the MC. Then Push glides in, sounding bulletproof and battle-worn.
“All the black crows I dreamed / Even the black cloud hovering / Couldn’t touch me in the bulletproof Cullinan”
—It’s him confronting karma while refusing to flinch. He’s lived through so much dirt, even God might hesitate. But there’s no delusion here. No invincibility complex. Just pain wrapped in poetry. He’s not asking for forgiveness, but he knows he made it out when others didn’t. Pharrell’s hook brings the spiritual anchor—equal parts gospel and testimony.
“I seen killers and kingpins sing behind the wall / I watched many men die ’cause no one would make the call.”
The voice of a witness. The sound of regret echoes through marble hallways. It’s the last shot in a film that’s all climax, no filler. This is Clipse at their most human—not street gods, but men who barely escaped their own mythology. And the final truth? They missed this wall… By the Grace of God.
What Clipse pulled off here wasn’t just an album—it was a strategic operation in artistic warfare. Let God Sort ‘Em Out wasn’t dropped; it was deployed. Every detail, from the minimalist cinematic teasers, the selective press silence, the luxury runway premieres, to the defiant independence from Def Jam—it all screams intentionality. This wasn’t just a rap duo reuniting. This was vision-boarding in blood, sweat, and Louis. It’s a case study in how to bet on yourself, speak your truth, and back it up with results. The rollout wasn’t trendy—it was tactical. No filler tracks, no lazy singles, no compromise. Just thirteen scenes of immaculate execution from artists who know exactly who they are and what they came to do. They didn’t pivot. They didn’t pander. They stayed the course—and that’s what makes this album a blueprint. Not just for music, but for anybody crafting a legacy with intention. Because when you move like this, there’s only one thing left to say:
Let God sort ‘em out.
SWIRV 🖖🏽
Best article i’ve ever read on substack. I will for sure be reading your other stuff and telling my friends about you. Keep at it brother!