The two Clipse songs Pusha T hates: “I just don’t like them”
Clipse, on and off, have been making and performing music since the mid-’90s, so their discography is deep. They’ve got a lot of songs to choose from when they’re putting together a setlist, but there are two tracks in particular that Pusha T is always reluctant to perform.
During an appearance on the Cover Lines interview series, Push was called out on this. The interviewer explicitly brought up a rumour he’d heard that the rapper refused to play the Clipse songs ‘Ma, I Don’t Love Her’ and ‘When the Last Time,’ even though fans wanted to hear them.
Searching for a rationale that might satisfy the interviewer and fans, Push, smiling, eventually just gave up. “I just don’t like the records,” he conceded. Simple as.
After a little light-hearted back and forth, Push did go on to elaborate a bit on his position. “We’ve been in it so long,” he said of his and his brother Malice’s career as Clipse. “I think the discography is so deep.”
With so many songs in their back catalogue, why should Clipse play songs that they no longer enjoy themselves? As Push put it, “We have so many records we love, and then you learn to make records that you love to perform. So now it’s like, man, I can’t wait to get to ‘Momma I’m So Sorry.’”
As for those two Clipse songs he doesn’t like to perform, Push has at least gone into more detail about his issue with ‘When the Last Time’ during a separate interview with Complex. Acknowledging that fans are always trying to persuade him to perform it, he has always dug his heels in.
“I never do it,” he said of the song, “and I hate it.”
Strong words, but he explained himself. “It was probably my highest charting record ever and I hate it,” he said. “It did everything it was supposed to do, but it was a little bit more conventional. It had that pop thump. You can kinda tell records when you perform them on stage and it was like, ‘Man, for some reason this don’t got the street thump.’”
The “street thump” is important to Push, because, to his mind, it’s people from the streets that he is performing for in the first place. “It’s just a matter of personal taste,” he said. “I’m sure everyone else disagrees with me.”
He even conceded that one of the song’s own producers would probably disagree with him on this one. Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo produced the track as the Neptunes, and they each received a songwriting credit, too.
“Pharrell would probably end this call if he heard me saying that,” Push admitted to Complex. “And my brother is like, ‘Why don’t you wanna perform it if people are asking for it?’ And, I’m like ‘Eh, nah.’”