The beef between Drake and Kendrick Lamar may be over, but its aftershocks continue to reverberate. The most peculiar example might involve the reunion album by Virginia rap duo Clipse, AKA Pusha T and Malice. It was scheduled to be released by a subsidiary of Universal, home to both Lamar and Drake. But the label apparently demanded that the track Chains and Whips, featuring Lamar, be removed – despite the fact that, dazzling and pugilistic though his verse is (“I don’t,” he avers, “fuck with the kumbaya shit”), neither it nor the rest of the track seems to reference Drake. Years before the Drake/Lamar beef erupted, Pusha T released The Story of Adidon, a Drake diss track so brutal that one critic compared it to “bringing a gun to a knife fight”. Pusha T alleged that Universal’s “lyrics committee” deemed the very presence of Lamar on a track also featuring him was an act of provocation. As a result, Clipse wound up buying out their Universal contract: Let God Sort Em Out instead appears on Jay-Z’s Roc Nation label, with Chains and Whips present and correct.
It’s an intriguing twist in a broader story – Drake is, after all, currently suing Universal for defamation over Lamar’s 2024 hit Not Like Us (Universal has called that case “utterly without merit”, and has not commented on the Clipse situation). And, if nothing else, the alleged existence of a shadowy committee fearful of Clipse’s lyrical power is useful publicity for the duo’s return.
