After sixteen years away, Clipse didn’t come back to relive their former glory. They came back to finish the project they started. Let God Sort Em Out isn’t a nostalgia trip — it’s a reckoning that has finally arrived after a masterful rollout. Pharrell handles the production top to bottom, but this isn’t a return to the style of Neptunes from the 2000s. It’s sharper, colder, and sometimes stranger. The sound moves between cold-blooded minimalism and grandeur, and it frames the two brothers’ voices — Pusha T and Malice — who now rap like men who’ve realized the full cost of their ambitions.
The opening tracks, “The Birds Don’t Sing,” sets the tone with almost no fanfare. Pusha and Malice are grieving the loss of their parents. The song sits in silence before it even begins, and once it does, it lands like a prayer. There are moments on this album that feel heavier than any beat can carry, and that’s the point. Even when the flows are airtight and the bars and wordplay are vicious, there’s a weight underneath: memory, mortality, and loss. Clipse have always made music about consequences, but never this directly.
Then the album flexes. “Chains & Whips,” “P.O.V.,” and “Ace Trumpets” bring back the cold-chested luxury raps, but they’re reframed. There’s tension in the subtext and more scar tissue in the delivery. The verses land clean, but the energy isn’t youthful — it’s watchful. There’s power here, but it’s been earned the hard way. That energy carries through the middle of the album, even in moments that lean theatrical. The confidence is still there, but it’s less about proving something and more about refusing to do anything but tell the truth.
The production walks that same line. Pharrell keeps things stark — tight drums, unexpected breaks, beats that feel like they’re holding something back. It’s not trying to be pretty. There’s a rawness, even when the polish is there. But when guests show up — Kendrick, Tyler, Nas, John Legend — they feel like pieces of a grander architecture, not spotlights. They enter the world Clipse built instead of pulling us out of it.
What makes Let God Sort Em Out resonate isn’t the reunion. It’s the clarity. These aren’t two rappers picking up where they left off. These are two people who have changed since we last heard from them, and you can hear that in every line. The album is bitter, weary, sometimes defiant, but never hollow. It’s about legacy, yes, but also about grief. About what gets lost when you give your life to a thing, and what it costs to look back at all of it and try to keep going. Clipse didn’t come back to make a statement. The presence and gift of new Clipse music is the statement.
Favorite tracks: “The Birds Don’t Sing” — “Chains & Whips” — “So Be It” — “Ace Trumpets” — “E.B.I.T.D.A.” — “F.I.C.O.” — “Let God Sort Em Out/Chandeliers” — “By The Grace Of God”
SCORE: 9.5/10