Pusha T Gets It – XXL Issue 149

Get It
The much-anticipated solo debut from Pusha T is nearly here.
Words Alex Gale
Images Jimmy Fontaine

Editor’s Note: This story originally appeared in the July/August 2013 issue of XXL Magazine.

“RIGHT NOW, KANYE! RIGHT NOW!”

Pusha T is yelling at his boss.

He screams into his iPhone headset and punctuates each word with a punch to the wall. The members of his band, assembled at a Brooklyn studio to rehearse for his upcoming show at Coachella, laugh nervously, unsure if they should be worried about their next paycheck.

But Pusha isn’t angry with Kanye—he’s ecstatic. He’s just heard the final version of his new song, “Numbers On The Board,” for the first time, fresh from Kanye’s e-mail to his phone. And he wants to leak it online—“right now!”

“Just tell me, tell me now, that the song’s going,” Pusha pleads, stomping his foot half-jokingly. “Just let it go. Please! This is not about clothes, this is not about high fashion. It’s about black T-shirts—and drugs. Okay? Good-bye.”

Pusha hangs up and lets loose what could best be described as a cackle, like a mad scientist who’s just created a monster. (Not a bad description of the grimy beat and sharp rhymes on “Numbers On The Board,” come to think of it.) The triumphant laugh of a 35-year-old rapper, who, after a tumultuous two-decade-long roller-coaster ride in the music industry, is reaching a new, unlikely apex. And that’s even before his first official solo album, My Name Is My Name, drops July 16 [Editor's Note: Release delayed until August] via Kanye West’s G.O.O.D. Music.

“I’m really excited, man. This is the first time I’ve felt like a real, full-fledged rapper,” Pusha says later, standing on the studio’s roof, with Manhattan’s skyline looming behind him in the distance. “I’m dreaming rap, having phone calls about rap, full-fledged conversations about rap. All that energy—this is my first time ever really feeling like that.”

It would be tempting to write the sentiment off as typical pre-album hyperbole, but not with Pusha, not now: For the first time in more than a decade, he seems to have the wind at his back. Few artists sport more industry battle scars. Pusha, real name Terrence Thornton, first started rapping in the early 1990s, when he and his older brother, Gene “Malice” Thornton, formed the Clipse in their native Virginia Beach. It’s a town more known for resorts and military bases, but it did produce two other notable hip-hop luminaries: Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo, a.k.a. The Neptunes. The producers’ success helped land the Clipse a deal with Elektra in 1997. But after a debut single, “The Funeral,” flopped, the duo was dropped; a first album-to-be, Exclusive Audio Footage, produced entirely by The Neptunes, shelved.

The group toiled without a deal until 2001, when Arista signed them and released their proper debut, Lord Willin’, a year later. With hit singles like “Grindin’” and “When The Last Time” and The Neptunes at the peak of their pop dominance, the record went platinum. But when Arista was absorbed by Jive during the Sony-BMG merger in 2004, Pusha and Malice were mired in label limbo yet again. After a highly acclaimed series of mixtapes with their crew, the Re-Up Gang, the duo finally released their sophomore album, Hell Hath No Fury, and though it was hailed by some as a classic (this magazine gave it the maximum “XXL” rating), it tanked commercially. Their third album, Til The Casket Drops, released in 2009 on Columbia after yet another label switcheroo, fared even worse.

“I have the wildest discography in rap,” Pusha says. “It’s like I ain’t even supposed to be here. Nobody survives hiatuses like that.”

But the biggest speed bump of all had nothing to do with industry politics. The Clipse’s music, with its detailed, first-person accounts of the drug game, has often been labeled “coke rap.” In April 2009, however, it became clear that the group’s dope-boy imagery had a real-life backstory. Federal prosecutors charged seven of the Clipse’s business associates and friends with running a $20 million cocaine and marijuana ring and laundering money via music-industry pursuits—including Soul Providers Entertainment, the Clipse’s booking agency. The accused held “themselves out as music producers, rappers, entrepreneurs, club owners, clothing designers and other legitimate occupations in order to conceal the true source of their income,” the indictment read. Pusha and Malice themselves were never charged, but former manager Anthony “Geezy” Gonzalez pled guilty to drug conspiracy charges and was sentenced to 32 years.

“It’s a painful situation—all of my family that started this music thing with me are in jail,” Pusha says. “It was a super, super rough time. I remember I went to my mother’s house, and she’d heard what was going on. She’s looking at me trying to read me, like, ‘How are you feeling? Are you afraid?’ She didn’t know what to say to me, but after a while she asked me, ‘Are they coming to get my car?’”

Four years later, Pusha’s brother still tenses up when talking about it. For Malice, now known as “No Malice,” the brush with the law led to big changes. Shortly after Gonzalez’s sentencing, the elder Thornton took a step back from music, changed his name, publicly embraced Christianity, and wrote and self-published a novel about it, Wretched, Pitiful, Poor, Blind And Naked, in 2011. “Before this happened, we were in L.A., in an elevator. We had just gotten done talking to Rick Rubin. And I said, ‘Bro, I just can’t do it. You wanna do your solo thing, you should go ahead,’” says No Malice on the phone from his Virginia home. “But this was the cherry on top. When everything unfolded, we kept getting phone call after phone call: ‘They just picked up so-and-so.’ And the last thing we heard was, ‘They’re still looking for two more people.”

No Malice says waiting for the other shoe to drop was unbearable. “A little later, we were booked on this flight going to Minneapolis, and Pusha’s not on the plane,” he remembers. “The stewardess says we’re about to take off, but he’s not there—and he’s not the type to miss no flight. All I can hear in my head is, ‘They’re still looking for two more people.’ Last minute, right before they close the door, he comes running, hopping on the flight. I stood up in the middle of the aisle and yelled, “I can’t take this! I’m not doing this anymore!’ I still love and support my brother, but that was life-altering.”

Pusha would surely say the same. With his brother in self-imposed exile, his entire team behind bars and no label behind him, Pusha was suddenly the last man standing. “I was really by myself. It was a lot for me to take at that time, in all honesty,” he says. “I was like, ‘Malice really isn’t coming to the studio?’”

Now, though, Pusha has a new musical family. In 2010, two weeks after appearing alongside Kanye at the VMAs with a career-resuscitating verse on the smash single “Runaway,” he signed with G.O.O.D. Music and began a streak of scene-stealing verses that featured some of the sharpest bars of his career—“So Appalled,” “Mercy,” “I Don’t Like (Remix),” “New God Flow.” “Mercy,” Pusha’s biggest commercial success since “Grindin’,” even led to two Grammy nominations.

“Kanye knows what moves me in regards to music,” says Pusha. “We have an understanding. He been on that shit. He says to me, ‘Man, you gonna be loved
by Pitchfork and you gonna be loved in [Miami night club] Bambu.’ And that’s all I want.”

On Wrath Of Caine and Fear Of God, the solo mixtapes he’s released with G.O.O.D., Pusha’s lyrics remained firmly rooted in the Clipse’s coke-rap wheelhouse. “Numbers On The Board,” too. “Mix drug and show money, Biggs Burke on tour,” he raps, referring to Roc-A-Fella Records co-founder Kareem “Biggs” Burke, who was sentenced to five years in 2012 after pleading guilty to conspiring to distribute more than 100 kilos of marijuana. Sounds an awful lot like Soul Providers Entertainment.

“That’s the story for so many people in the music game,” Pusha says. “We weren’t Roc-A-Fella by any means, but we did come up together and we have indulged in both lifestyles.”

It’s almost like 2009 never happened. For Pusha, at least.

No Malice feels differently. “You can’t keep playing with fire,” he says. Working on his own solo album—the bible-thumping Hear Ye Him, due July 2—he shakes his head at his brother’s Biggs lyric. “At least I’m not going to keep playing with it.”

But for Pusha, that fire, the same that heats Pyrex cookware, still fuels his music. “That energy is what drives me and motivates me,” Pusha says of the drug world. “It doesn’t just go away. This is real life. I still live in Virginia. My friends still go to jail. I still talk to some of ’em; some of ’em, I lost. My friends call me from jail when they hear me on the radio, like, ‘You was talkin’ that shit.’ That’s what they wanna hear, so that’s what I try to give them.”

That same fire has positioned Pusha as G.O.O.D. Music’s attack dog—he’s taken the lead in a high-profile beef with the rival Young Money camp over the past year. “It ain’t nothing serious,” says Pusha, noting he’s run into both Drake and Lil Wayne in person since the back-and-forth erupted. “That’s just my sparring shit. This is the sport of rap, and that’s it. It’s nothing more than that.”

Whatever Pusha is using for motivation, it’s working. My Name Is My Name is in its final stages. The vocals—including guest spots from Rick Ross, Future, Kendrick Lamar, Re-Up Gang, The-Dream, Kanye West, 2 Chainz and others—are all recorded. Kanye is putting his last executive-producer touches on tracks by Mano, Rico Beats, Don Cannon, Swizz Beatz, Nottz, Hudson Mohawke. Further down the line, Pusha and No Malice are planning new albums from the Clipse and the Re-Up Gang.

After releasing three albums over 20 years, Pusha isn’t down to wait any longer. Fifteen minutes after his tantrum to Kanye, “Numbers On The Board” hits the web.

“We think we about to change radio. We think we about to shift the streets for a minute,” Pusha says of the song. “There’s a level of urgency; we want this shit out. I don’t hear nobody playing it right now—I’m getting upset!”

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