Credit: James Willamor

Pusha T has revealed that a Kendrick Lamar verse and his beef with Drake led to him and Clipse leaving Def Jam. Last week, the Virginia duo officially announced their comeback album, Let God Sort Em Out. The project will feature Kendrick on a song called ‘Whips & Chains’.

However, Def Jam wasn’t on board with Kendrick’s appearance on the song. The label is owned by Universal Music Group, whose two artists, Drake and Kendrick, went head to head in a brutal rap battle last year.

Pusha is also known for feuding with Drake, famously telling the world he had a son on his 2018 diss track, ‘The Story of Adidon’. Def Jam was reportedly concerned about the “antagonistic opp-optics of two of Drake’s biggest enemies linking on wax.”

The ‘Trouble on My Mind’ rapper called the whole thing “stupid” and was disgusted by Def Jam’s approach, considering no shots were sent Drizzy’s way.

“They wanted me to ask Kendrick to censor his verse, which of course I was never doing,” Pusha told GQ. “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…”

Despite leaving Def Jam, he was ultimately happy about finding his way over to Jay-Z’s Roc Nation; he and No Malice have “plenty more music” on the way. “It felt good to even see how other labels were buying for the project,” he said. “I think that that synergy, just in a rap sense, is going to speak volumes.”

Let God Sort Em Out is scheduled for release on July 11th. In his unreleased verse, Kendrick raps, “Therapy taught me how to open up/ It also showed me I don’t give a fuck.” Pusha previously collaborated with Kendrick in 2013 on ‘Nosetalgia’ from his My Name Is My Name album.