BLACK VINYL Even with 16 years between their third album, 2009's Til the Casket Drops, and their fourth, 2025's Let God Sort Em Out, Virginia rap duo Clipse have been anything but absent. Even without new music under the Clipse banner, the group's imprint on rap has only grown, with regular reminders of greatness coming from solo efforts like Pusha T's ironclad 2018 outing Daytona, and subsequent waves of new rappers clearly taking influence from the duo's legendary back catalog. In that sense, Let God Sort Em Out isn't a return as much as it is a continuation. No one else has ever quite matched the Thornton brothers' high-impact alchemy, one that tempered the stark reality of rhymes centered around coke deals and street hierarchies with dizzying wordplay and spotless production that often bore subliminal pop touches courtesy of the Neptunes. This singular chemistry arrives in an updated form on Let God Sort Em Out, one that sometimes indulges in a slightly nostalgic sound, but more often marches forward. Pharrell Williams produces the entire album, and the instrumentals are polished to an almost detrimental degree. The thick bass hits and spare percussion of "Ace Trumpets" take notes from the minimalism of Clipse's best-known mid-2000s tracks, but replace the rawness of that earlier sound with production so dialed in it becomes dull. The spacy synths of "All Things Considered" get closer to the unusual power the group are capable of at their heights, while the banging beat of "Chains & Whips" comes on strong with distorted bass bumps and fragments of trumpet, but gets most of its intensity from effortless rhymes by Pusha T and Malice, and from a staggering feature from Kendrick Lamar. Other notable special guests also contribute, with Nas, Tyler, The Creator, Stove God Cooks, and others showing up on various tracks. As with everything they've done before it, the album boils down to the visceral talent and pummeling magic that happens whenever Clipse are rapping. This is exemplified on the simmering "M.T.B.T.T.F." (short for the appropriately titled "Mike Tyson Blow to the Face"), and also on the more emotional but no less overpowering grief-laden opening track, "The Birds Don't Sing." Even a bland beat with an exceptionally mainstream cameo from John Legend on the hook can't soften the potency of lyrics about the Thornton brothers losing their parents, and the self-awareness and regrets those losses caused. Clipse were already exhibiting maturation 16 years earlier when moments of self-reflection appeared amidst the coke raps and dominant sneering of Til the Casket Drops. Here, the pair still sound like the mortal threat they represented in younger days, but they integrate refinement, spirituality, and reflection on hard-learned lessons under that lens, communicating from a place of wisdom without losing any of their time-tested fury. A1 The Birds Don't SingA2 Chains & WhipsA3 P.O.V.A4 Ace TrumpetsA5 All Things ConsideredA6 MTBTTFB1 E.B.I.T.D.A.B2 F.I.C.O.B3 Inglorious BastardsB4 So Far AheadB5 Let God Sort Em Out / ChandeliersB6 By The Grace Of God
