The Clipse rejected the “coke rap” label in an interview with Vulture. Pusha T and Malice explained their beef with the description as they prepared for their comeback album.
“We went through all the ‘cocaine rap’ complaints, the stigma of, ‘All they talk about is coke,’” Pusha T said. “You get tired of it. Then you realize the people who only look at it that way aren’t even listening to the music correctly. You can’t even take their opinion as anything. I believe that through all of the years, if that’s what your gripe is, then you are not a Clipse fan and you don’t listen to music well at all.”
Malice noted, “There’s no way that you can listen to that level of storytelling and experience and just walk away just saying, ‘That’s coke rap.’”
Pusha called coke rap a “very cheap way of describing” their music.
“We just told our story,” Malice said. “It was the absolute truth. You take away from it what you want to take from it, but if you just want to say that it’s just crack rap, then you can’t even assess what’s really being said or what’s going on.”
The Clipse debuted a new song titled “Birds Don’t Sing” at a Louis Vuitton fashion show in Paris. The duo plans to release an album within the next year.
“I think the album shows the supreme maturation of a rap duo,” Pusha T said. “I think this is where you get the difference between taste and filler. This music is curated. This is a high taste-level piece of work. You can only have that level of taste when you have the fundamentals down to a science. I think it’s been definitely missing. Then there’s the competitive aspect.”
Malice added, “It’s what rap should look like if you’re real about your craft, real about your experience, real about your storytelling. It’s bringing the fans along to see the growth, not trying to fit in or fabricate. It just seems like in other genres of music, they have the luxury of growing. For some reason, we act like we’re not supposed to evolve. This is what the true evolution of the Clipse looks like. It’s just good to be able to show that and still have high-level raps.”
The Clipse’s last album, Till the Casket Drops, was released in 2009. Their upcoming project will be entirely produced by Pharrell.