Overview:
Clipse, the hip-hop duo from Virginia, proved their reunion was worth the wait with their exceptional show in Dallas, featuring their new album "Let God Sort Em Out." The duo, who have been influential in Southern Hip-Hop, showcased their lyrical skills and commitment to their craft. They also presented a unique concert environment with digital displays showing Black archival images and cultural iconography. The show was a testament to their status as "Black Archivists" and their ability to cater to their core audience with high-quality music and master-level penmanship.
Clipse brought their ‘Let God Sort Em Out’ Tour to The Bomb Factory in Deep Ellum for the Dallas leg, accompanied by EARTHGANG, on a warm but beautiful Thursday night on September 4th. With South Dallas’ icon Erykah Badu seated and in attendance, Terrance ‘Pusha T’ Thornton, Gene ‘Malice’ Thornton and their tour DJ, Yoo Q! put on an exceptional show for the capacity crowd.
While us ‘Day One’ Clipse fans baggered Pusha T for more than a decade about another Clipse album, we have to admit that we were also skeptical that Malice (once upon a time ‘No Malice’) would even return to the group after his righteous 16-year hiatus. After hearing Malice pop-out on “I Pray for You” from Pusha’s last solo album, It’s Almost Dry, and seeing him make special appearances at Pharrell’s 2022 Something In The Water festival, the 2022 BET Hip-Hop Awards, and Chicago’s 2023 Hyde Park Summer Fest, we had a feeling a Clipse reunion was on the horizon. However, once we heard NEW Clipse music (an early version of “Chains and Whips”) while the Thornton brothers walked the runway in Pharrell’s 2023 Louis Vuitton’s Spring-Summer 2024 show, it was a wrap. CLIPSE are back!
Fast forward back to September 4, 2025, and from the start of their time in Dallas, the Clipse proved that their reunion was worth the wait. Appearing one at a time with the first song, “Chains & Whips,” Pusha T and Malice weaved through the majority of their new album.
The duo also swerved through a few songs from previous albums Lord Willin’, Til the Casket Drops and Hell Hath No Fury. They even blessed us with their verses from Birdman’s “What Happened to That Boy?”
However, I had several epiphanies while watching them perform songs like “Popular Demand (Popeyes),” “Momma I’m So Sorry,” “So Far Ahead,” and “Grindin’.”
Clipse = Southern Rap
Though many do not mention or acknowledge it, Clipse are Southern Hip-Hop artists. Stating that the Clipse belong in the lineage of Southern rap is historically imperative because their home state, Virginia, created the first legal framework for race (even before the United States was founded) and may be where the idea of lynching began. Malice referenced this on “Virginia”, from their 2002 album, Lord Willin’:
“…Ironic/ the same place I’m makin’ figures at/
That there’s the same land they used to hang n*ggas at/
In Virginia!”
Clipse are from the South. As a hip-hop duo known as lyricists and craftsmen, they were heavily influenced by the East Coast pedigree of EPMD, Mobb Deep, Raekwon and Ghostface Killah, AND they also belong in conversation with UGK, Eightball & MJG, and Outkast.
Clipse = Aging In Hip-Hop Like Fine Wine
While being booed, André 3000 of Outkast once decreed (while receiving “Best New Rap Group” award at the 1995 Source Awards) that “The South got something to say!” Dre and his partner Big Boi would go on to have the highest-selling Hip-Hop album of all time, the RIAA-certified Diamond and 2004 Grammy “Album of the Year” award-winning “Speakerboxxx/The Love Below.”
In a 2023 interview with GQ Magazine, however, André 3000 lamented “It actually feels…sometimes it feels inauthentic for me to rap because I don’t have anything to talk about in that way. I’m 48 years old. And not to say that age is a thing that dictates what you rap about, but in a way it does. And things that happen in my life, like, what are you talking about?”
Well, the Thornton brothers at 48 (Pusha T) and 52 (Malice) have much to discuss and are modeling how Gen X artists can cater to their core audience with high quality music, master-level penmanship and a phenomenal album rollout for their fourth (really fifth, IYKYK) studio album, “Let God Sort Em Out.”
A 50+ year-old MC (Malice) is the favorite for 2025 Lyricist of the Year, and his 48-year-old younger brother is right there with him. And this accompanying tour is a continuance of their attention to detail, respect for their craft, and curatorial sophistication.
CLIPSE = Black Archivists
During their one-hour long show, as a Clipse audience member, you are immediately confronted by two large digital displays showing Black archival images and cultural iconography accompanying their music and performance.
From video clips of the 80’s Crack Era to actual childhood and adolescent pictures of the brothers and family members, their decision to share intimate family photos, Black Americana and pop culture memories of their lives creates a contextually different concert environment than experiencing lesser rappers just walking around the stage. I immediately thought about the work of Sierra King’s BUILD YOUR ARCHIVE, where Sierra’s praxis is “intentional choices and ritual led record-keeping,” and utilizing “photography, video, written and oral history to document the framework and make it accessible to future audiences.”
During “Grindin,” the duo performed in front of video clips of Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc. members hopping, Freaknic dancers, young people beating on lunchroom tables and Black girls playing pattycake, while “Ace Trumpets” was backed by a menage of clips of Dizzy Gillespie playing his signature 45-degree upturned-bell trumpet, Black ballerinas, Bambi and Black exotic dancers spinning on the pole!
The show’s visual climax was the visceral, wrenching and beautiful “The Birds Don’t Sing,” a searing tribute featuring John Legend and Stevie Wonder (!) to Pusha and Malice’s late parents, Gene Thornton Sr. and Mildred Thornton. The two brothers rapped their heartbreaking verses while a generous amount of their family photos featuring their late parents. The song ended with large scale portraits of both parents on their own screen. It was an extremely emotional experience you don’t usually get in the middle of rap concerts.
Clipse = For The Culture
Pusha T and Malice have three more shows left in the United States (Sept. 8th in Chicago, Sept. 10th in Detroit, and Sept. 11th in Baltimore) before the begin a European leg of their tour in November. My advice is to catch the Clipse…if you can.
RELATED: “The South Got Something to Say” a Sold-Out Celebration of Southern Hip-Hop at the South Dallas Cultural Center; featuring a pop-up Hip-Hop exhibition by Jerry Hawkins and the Hawkins Archives & Works.
In the meantime, Clipse’s performance encourages audiences to be true to the culture. For more enrichment, seek out Southern Cultures quarterly focused on Southern Hip-Hop, published by UNC Press for the Center for the Study of the American South. Local talent, Chris Young, shares his story of how Southern Rap influenced him from the age of seven.
Chris’ partner, attorney, author and freedom fighter Brittany K. Barnett (a friend and a personal hero of mine) and Pusha T worked together for years to free Tony Lewis from a life sentence in federal prison. And they did.
Safe to say that Clipse are conscious freedom fighters and activists, too! For proof, listen to Pusha T’s ode to Freddie Gray, police brutality and injustice featuring Jill Scott, “Sunshine,” from his KING PUSH album.
