How did Pusha T cross paths with Pharrell in 1997?
Pusha T’s success in the music industry can be traced back to Clipse’s first single, ‘Grindin’’, which came out in 2002. That put Push and his brother Malice on the map, setting them up for a long, decades-spanning career to follow.
But aside from the brothers themselves, there was another duo that was key to Clipse’s early success. ‘Grindin’’ was produced by the Neptunes, whose sparse beat made the track stand out from the crowd.
The Neptunes, made up of Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo, were themselves approaching the height of their powers by this point during the 2000s, and ‘Grindin’’ proved to be a match made in heaven for all involved. The song boosted the reputations of both the Neptunes and Clipse.
Pharrell had known Push and Malice for a long time before helping to create the beat to their first single – they were all from Virginia Beach, which is where a 14-year-old Push encountered Pharrell, who is a few years older, for the first time, and as Push recalled to The Guardian in 2014, they met because of a girl.
“There was a girl that Pharrell wanted to date, and he thought I was dating her,” he explained. “But she was just a very good friend of mine.”
The misunderstanding didn’t prove to be a problem for the young men, and they moved past it without incident. But then Push and Pharrell became quite close, as did their respective musical partners Malice and Hugo. The two duos were “really tight” by the time Push and Malice decided to form Clipse.
It was fitting that, years later, the Neptunes were the ones to produce Clipse’s first single. The duos had different sensibilities, but that, if anything, seemed to help their partnership when it came down to it. As Push framed it, Clipse were about “street hip-hop”, while the Neptunes were “the maestros of being different”.
“Our styles clashed but meshed,” he noted, “their beats give us the free range to say all the reckless things that we wanted to say. At the same time, I feel like our lyrics opened up the mind of the streets to the beats.”
The clash of styles worked for everyone. ‘Grindin’’ reached number 30 on the Billboard Hot 100, which helped Clipse and Pusha T on their way towards stardom. As for the Neptunes, it solidified their status as the era’s hit-making machines.