Clipse Fought Def Jam for Kendrick Lamar Feature

Let God Sort Em Out is produced by the duo’s longtime collaborator Pharrell Williams and will be “marketed and distributed in partnership” with Roc Nation. Or, at least one-half of its collective collaborator, The Neptunes; the production duo’s other half, Chad Hugo, has been in a legal dispute with Pharrell over rights to the Neptunes’ group name. The matter hasn’t been publicly resolved.

K. Dot is confirmed to be on the song “Chains & Whips.” But the Kendrick appearance led to a rift between the duo and their label, Def Jam. The label was nervous about Kendrick Lamar and Pusha T together, given their shared history of beef with Drake. Def Jam wanted no parts of it.

“They wanted me to ask Kendrick to censor his verse, which of course I was never doing," Push claimed. "And then they wanted me to take the record off. And so, after a month of not doing it, Steve Gawley, the lawyer over there was like, ‘We'll just drop the Clipse.’ But that can't work because I'm still there [solo]. But [if] you let us all go…"

Longtime Clipse manager Steven Victor told Billboard that it wasn’t easy brokering their exit from Def Jam.

“If you’re an artist, your whole life is to create art and put it out,” Victor says. “If someone’s telling you that you can’t do that, or you have to do it within the confines of whatever box they put you in, that’s like creative jail.”

Def Jam opted to drop Clipse as a group and Pusha as a solo artist. Let God Sort Em Out is being released via Roc Nation, and Push says that their landing with the house Jay-Z built makes sense.

“I think that that synergy, just in a rap sense, is going to speak volumes,” he says.

Let God Sort ‘Em Out is set to be released July 11.