Clipse, “Got ‘Em Hatin'” (Originally Published December 2006)

Rap fans know they’re great. Critics know they’re great. The Clipse, themselves, know they’re great. But just when everyone thought their long-awaited, highly anticipated sophomore album was finally coming out, music biz fate pulled a Halloween trick on them. For Malice and Pusha T, it wasn’t a treat.

Words Thomas Golianopoulos
Images Kenneth Cappello

September 27, 2006. Malice really wants to talk. Two days ago, he learned that the Clipse’s sophomore album, Hell Hath No Fury, had been pushed back. Again. This time from October 31 to December 12. It’s a big enough deal that he’s returning a reporter’s call at 9:35 a.m. Yeah, six weeks is that big a deal. “Let me tell you what it is,” Malice barks into the phone…

Wait. Not yet.

Almost a month earlier, on September 1, 2006, Gene “Malice” Thornton Jr., 34, and Terrence “Pusha T” Thornton, 29, sat in a penthouse conference room in the Time Hotel near Times Square. It was a Friday night, but they had no desire to go club hopping. They’re not really feeling the City these days. “New York,” Pusha said, “it’s mostly business for us. I don’t sense any trendsetting or innovation.” Besides, it was raining, they were traveling to Virginia the next day, and the entire town was partied out from the previous evening’s MTV Video Music Awards.

That night had gone well. Malice and Pusha walked the red carpet. They had orchestra seats near their longtime friend and producer Pharrell Williams. They departed midway through the show. They hit Beyoncé’s party at the 40/40 Club. They didn’t last long at Pharrell’s shindig, however, because, Malice said, “It was too hot and sweaty.” New York was mostly business that weekend because Hell Hath No Fury was supposed to drop on October 31. They were sure of it. They’d received e-mails from their label, Jive Records, verifying October 31. Halloween. The perfect date. Fit the album title perfectly. They were excited yet still skeptical. “I don’t believe in any label,” Malice said. “I don’t believe in anything they have to do with.”

Okay. Now.

September 27, 2006. “Let me tell you what it is,” Malice barks into the phone, speaking with controlled rage. “They,” they being Jive Records, “don’t move with any type of aggression. If they moved how we said to move, we could have made the Halloween release date.” Basically, Jive wanted “Dirty Money” as HHNF’s second single. The brothers Thornton wanted “What It Do (Wamp Wamp).” A standoff ensued, no one blinked, and there was no follow-up to “Mr. Me Too,” so the album got pushed.

Jive Senior Vice President Chris Lighty, who is also the Clipse’s former manager, admits that, “There is not a meeting of the minds going on right now.” But he defends the company’s decision. “The Clipse album getting pushed back is just making sure they get the best push possible. The market is a terrible place right now. You don’t want to put them out there unless the market is prime and ready for them. Fergie sold 100-something thousand with a huge, gigantic pop record. Chingy has the No. 1 record in the country—60,000 units.”

The Clipse aren’t really hearing that this morning. “We don’t care what the album does,” Malice says. “Put the bitch out. Who cares? I don’t care at all... I feel like I don’t have to explain to this label who we are or what we do. We’re definitely not what’s popping on the radio. Our credibility is all we have. It ain’t no sensational story about the Clipse, other than label drama.”

Actually, it is pretty sensational: Reformed dope dealers from Virginia sell nearly a million records with an uncompromising, critically acclaimed debut then sit in label purgatory for four years. (Don’t think four years is a long time? When said debut, Lord Willin’, was released in August 2002, Ja Rule was arguably the most popular rapper on the planet.) And just when all the label drama seemed settled, well, apparently, it wasn’t. Once again, the Clipse are getting hosed because of something Pusha says is “not a Clipse issue.”

For all of Lord Willin’s bluster (remember “I’m not you, rapper…”?—it was four years ago), the Clipse take their rap very seriously. Malice laughs when asked about the contradiction. “Fuck that,” he says. “I’m real. I can contradict myself. I can’t be held to one thing I said on one record.” Both brothers think today’s audience doesn’t value lyricism and that this attitude has seeped into the music. “There is no one I’m checking for,” Malice says, before citing KRS-One, Rakim, Kool G Rap and Large Professor as influences. “I remember when everybody was hot in hip-hop. But I’m smart enough not to disclose my truest feelings about the rap game, because I can’t be labeled a hater. My kids like it, so maybe it’s for kids. Maybe people just want to have a good time. But fuck all that shit—it’s about lyric-driven hip-hop.”

The Clipse use words like “philosophy,” “language” and “literature” to describe their verses and would prefer not to be pigeonholed. “I feel slighted,” Malice says, “when people refer to our music as ‘coke rap.’”

We Got It 4 Cheap collaborator Clinton Sparks agrees. “Their lyricism is sick,” says the Boston-based mixtape DJ. “They are overlooked for that. They definitely should be more recognized for their lyrics.”

The Clipse have been around cocaine their entire life. They remember seeing scales in their grandmother’s closet as youngsters. The rush associated with getting so much money, so quickly, was appealing, and two older cousins introduced Malice to hustling in the late 1980s. He was 15 years old and receiving $10 a week in allowance.

But in 1992—that’s right after the first Gulf War—Malice, who had a child on the way, enlisted in the U.S. Army. He did two years and 23 weeks and returned home to find Pusha immersed in the drug game. “[I was] getting taken advantage of by older guys,” Pusha remembers. “Put through hell. Like, you’ve got half baking soda. They’re not telling you that, and you’re out there debating with fiends.”

“This is heart attack,” Malice says, impersonating one of those fiends. Both brothers double over in laughter (which is pretty disturbing if you think about it). “It’s a higher high,” Malice says of crack’s frightening allure. “It must tap into some pleasure zone that can’t [otherwise] be reached. I don’t know. I’ve never done it.”

“Black-Ass” Robin had. She was a thirty-something mother of at least two kids and, like many of the people with whom the Thornton brothers did business, a crackhead. Malice would camp in her apartment and sell crack to all her “fiend friends.” For every $100 he made, Robin got $20. She’d then spend it on crack. “Her kids were talking about being hungry, and there was nothing in the refrigerator,” he remembers. “I got them some groceries once… I just seen their mother spend her last money on dope, and that really fucked with me. Like, it fucked with me… Last I heard, she moved and was doing a little better.”

“This shit is overwhelming. Crack is a fuckin’ epidemic. It’s nothing to be proud of. It’s nothing to glorify. I wonder how many people my album has sent to jail. I know niggas listened to that shit and sold the best dope they got.”

The alternate route hasn’t been any easier. Like the dope game, the music industry pays them and vexes them as well. The careful optimism of September 1 is long gone. “We have full creative control,” Pusha said back then, sprawled out on a couch in that penthouse conference room. “We never had A&R.” Malice had more confidence, too. “They value our decisions,” he said, sitting across from his brother. “Creatively, it’s always been a Clipse thing.”

But this is a business, and as of September 27, it seems pretty clear that the union between Gene and Terrence Thornton and Jive Records will not end well. The Clipse are contractually obligated for three more albums, and that’s not counting the still unreleased Hell Hath No Fury, which received a classic XXL rating in this magazine’s November issue. The situation looks bleak, but it could be worse. Black-Ass Robin left the Bridle Creek developments, but not everyone escapes.

“We’re fucking survivors, man,” says Malice, his anger slowly giving way to acceptance. It’s now a couple minutes before 10 a.m. “When the rap shit goes bad, life don’t stop for us. Life is about living and making the best out of it. As long as I got my health, it doesn’t get too much better for me.”

“As for December 12, I truly believe it will be the release date. We’re about to snap the fuck off. I couldn’t see them reneging on December 12. As fucked up as it has been thus far, I can’t see it, man. I can’t see it.”