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hen you see Gene Thornton a.k.a. Malice and Terrence Thornton a.k.a. Pusha T walk into an Atlanta Blimpie restaurant separately, you can still tell that they’re brothers. Their facial features are almost identical. Their skin complexions and voices are damn near the same. Hell, they even order similar sandwiches. But those are the dead giveaways. It’s the more subtle things that show that they are bound by blood.
macist, my dad was a general manager at the postal office. In our house it was about not being dumb and ignorant. Life is cruel, and if you not smart it will pass you by. But our parents weren’t always that. We were born in the Bronx and moved to Virginia. Plus we had an older brother who was big on the Hip Hop scene in the streets. He would record stuff on the boom box and rap to the songs. It wasn’t easy street for us. We had what we needed, but not everything we wanted.
They talk to you and others in a manner that keeps you at arms length without pushing you away too far. But the communication between the two of them is different, closer, intertwined. They can make eye contact for a split second and have the glance make ten statements at once. A brief chuckle to you is a secret paragraph to them. Even when you actually hear them exchanging words with each other, it sounds like they are speaking a completely different language, one you will never be able to decipher.
Since it sounds like your upbringing was decent, what do you think of poverty constantly being stressed in the music? Sometimes it sounds as if you can’t be a regular dude who likes it or wants to be a part of it. Malice: I mean, well, Hip Hop has always been about letting out frustration and what’s going on with you. I know why the caged bird sings, because he can. It’s an outlet. However, the people who didn’t have both parents and came up hard, there are times when that and other shortcomings have an effect on your character but there also comes a time when you have to take responsibility for yourself.
They tend to share that same rapport with their cult following of fans. People who listen to the Clipse understand them. They can hear the mastery of the English language in their lyrics. They can hear past the cocaine and car references and see that not only are they are two brothers who push their brains and pens to the limit, but two honest dudes. For a minute, critics in the media were placing your music in a genre called “Coke Rap.” How did you feel when you first saw that? Pusha: Well, [laughs] that’s what we do. But for real, at first I was slow on it. I was like damn, I’m seeing what they said and seeing the comparisons to the other artists doing it, and seeing we was coming out on top. It was like, damn, someone is giving us some praise. But that’s all they were harping on; coke rap, coke rap, coke rap! To me it’s way more than that, this is definitely an art with our shit. I think that’s why a backpacker can fuck with the Clipse just like a random street nigga. No matter what you talking about, that fundamental element of Hip Hop is there. There’s people that say it’s coke rap, but if you know anything about Hip Hop you know that we got verses and we got the fundamentals down to a science. We take it up and down whatever we want to do with it. It’s not just on the corner hustling. Malice: Every time I see them give us praise and comparing us to people talking along the same lines [pauses] I don’t wanna fall in the same category as anyone else, I somewhat feel slighted. When you see or read, “Clipse do coke music,” you think that’s all that it is. That just gives the media and white people something negative to say. Can you understand why they would say negative things? After all, you have posed for pictures with cocaine innuendoes. Malice: Yes, because they don’t understand. They take it at face value. You gotta scratch beneath the surface. Even when we got the cover of Mass Appeal, I’ma tell you, I wasn’t feeling that joint. I knew what it was, a big play on coke. In retrospect, I wouldn’t have done that, but it was a lot of politics going on at the time. I wasn’t even thinking straight. “No Business Like Snow Business”? I’m not feeling that. They snuck one in on me.
People tend to gravitate towards rap music because they can relate in some sort of way. Do you think some people relate too much to the point where they forget the entertainment element? Pusha: You always have to keep in mind that it’s entertainment. You just have to, however you look at it. People believe in artists. The successful artists are successful because they’ve bought into them. If you nice and you’re true to yourself, people will fuck with you. But this is entertainment; everybody just trying to get a buck, for real. Malice: But a lot of guys are painting a glorious picture of dope selling and hustling and getting bitches because that’s the “lifestyle” and that’s unrealistic. You gotta talk about everything. Going to jail, getting robbed, not just the good side. That’s what touches people, when you can see the vulnerability and you just not on top of the world. Vulnerability is definitely a feeling Clipse know well. They can tell you what its like to be on top of the world, and off the map. After a disastrous stint at Elektra records, where what was supposed to be their 1999 debut album Exclusive Audio Footage was shelved, they got a second chance three years later. Off the strength of their instant classic “Grindin’,” 2002’s Lord Willin’ went gold in just one month. World tours and cameos with everyone from E-40 to Justin Timberlake followed. Naturally, the duo hit the lab to capitalize off their success with a followup album, Hell Hath No Fury. But 2003 saw things come to a screeching halt. Their recording home Arista records folded into Jive Records during the Sony/BMG merger. After a year of pushed back release dates and frustration, Clipse took the street route. They went back to the drawing board, linked up with Philly MC’s Ab Liva and Sandman to form the Re-Up Gang and released the first installment of their infamous We Got It For Cheap mixtape series. The following year they hit their thirsty fans with volume two, arguably one of the best mixtapes of the past decade. Now, finally in 2006 it looks like Hell Hath No Fury will be hitting the shelves.
People who don’t listen to your music often tend to say that your lyrics go over listener’s heads or say that you only talk about selling drugs. How does it feel your have your work misinterpreted? Malice: Honestly, it doesn’t bother me much. That’s why we do these interviews. We fuck with the people out there so we try to get our points across all the time. But again, this rap is not for the dumb muthafucka. If you’re dumb then our music is not for you. We talk about shit in our verses. We pull from different parts of life and some of those things are very intellectual. If you don’t understand the fundamentals of Hip Hop like metaphors and similes and you don’t have your thought game on and if you not bright, a lot of stuff is going over your head. You’re just listening in vain. Sometimes we say a lot of shit and be like, damn, nobody is going to get that” But we sacrifice that for the dopeness because someone out there will catch it and when someone does get it, that feeling is worth a million bucks. We don’t sacrifice our lyrics. Even when I was just a listener of Hip Hop and I caught something everybody else didn’t I would explain it to them and from that point on whoever I enlightened would fall in love with that song.
With this Hell Hath No Fury album, is it going to be the music from 2004 that was never heard, or is it new material? Malice: It’s totally current and relative. We changed things, not because it was dated but because we’re at a different place from where we were back then. We’ve been through a lot, its been an emotional roller coaster for everybody. I think the fans would have loved it the way it was, but we’re giving them where we are at now in our lives. It’s more than current. It’s 2010.
Do you go out of your way to craft lyrics like that because you don’t hear it as a music listener? Malice: This is us. From the articulation to the vocabulary and the insight. We didn’t set out to try and sound intelligent, this is truly us.
Those mixtapes were treated as albums almost. That being said, how do you feel about the mixtape scene right now? Pusha: It’s definitely saturated. Malice: And dumb. Pusha: We drew inspiration from the mid-to-late 90s mixtapes. Volume one showed you what we wanted to do, which was come with some East coast fly rap shit. Volume two was about competition. It was, “I’ma take
Where would you say you inherited your intelligence? Malice: Well, we just had great parents, for one. My mom was a phar-
You guys are going to be brothers forever. But as far as being in a rap group together, did the record label drama strain your creative and business relationship? Malice: Never among us two. We’re tight knit, we have great understanding. That’s the magic of us getting along well. We know everything ain’t gonna go your way, but dealing with the industry and the old white men who don’t know what we’re really about, it took a lot of the magic and fun out of it for me. That’s why we did the mixtapes. We was feeling like we were 15 years old again with those mixtapes.
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