“I’m always looking for a beat that I know nobody else can rap on,” he tells me. He jokingly tells me how he loves working with Timbaland, who made the beat for Untouchable, because he’s “cracked the code” with his characteristically eccentric production. Still, as a rapper, Pusha T is as classic a wordsmith as the game has, working with intricate collisions of sounds and syllables, landing multiple punchlines while tackling adventurous beats. “The Clipse era was a competitive rap era for me and a competitive production era for The Neptunes.”
“It was more competitive earlier on,” Pusha T remembers as we zip through Chinatown. Its main tenant: create the cleverest way to rap about your hustle. Clipse’s brand of ebullient raps about the drug trade gave quick rise to a lyrically driven movement in hip-hop dubbed “coke rap”. In 2002, they released the LP Lord Willin’, featuring their breakout hit Grindin’ – a bonafide classic built with little more than a sparse drum beat. After signing their first record deal in 1997 with Elektra records to release their debut Exclusive Audio Footage, Clipse signed to Pharrell’s Star Trak imprint. In the early 90s, he and his brother Gene ‘Malice’ Thornton – who changed his artist name to No Malice after embracing Christianity around 2011 – joined forces with production powerhouse Pharrell Williams, then working with The Neptunes, to form Clipse. We call it ‘cracking the code.’”īorn Terrence Thornton, Pusha T has been a fixture in the collective hip-hop consciousness for as long as some of his fans have been alive. With that kind of relationship there’s always something to pull out of the space where we see things differently. “Me and Kanye see things differently a lot,” he tells me. West founded G.O.O.D Music in 2004, and with Pusha T signing to the label in 2010, the pair have become close friends and regular collaborators.
“We were in the gym and he was just thinking out loud like ‘man, I just feel like Pablo,’” Pusha T tells me, doing his best impression of Kanye’s excitement.
In a few hours, livestreamed to millions of viewers in theaters and online, and in front of 18,000 people at Madison Square Garden, Pusha T will stand beside Kanye West as he reveals Yeezy Season 3 and premieres his latest opus, The Life Of Pablo. In the back of the luxury SUV, Pusha T seems contemplative, staring out of his window as we cross the Williamsburg Bridge overlooking the East River and Manhattan. We’re on our way to Pusha T’s hotel in Midtown Manhattan where, having just wrapped up Crack’s cover shoot in Brooklyn, he needs to prepare for one of the most talked-about events in recent rap history. He’s the game’s most passionate chess player, and as rap contours itself to continuous changes in culture and technology, Pusha T thrives by staying one step ahead. He is timeless, and this is in part because rap is fun for him.
Rapping professionally since 1997, he came up as one half of Clipse and one fourth of the Re-Up Gang, and he’s recently earned the title as president of juggernaut hip-hop label G.O.O.D Music.