Soundcheck: The Clipse IS Back, Minus The Malice
posted in: Features • Urban
Last year, Virginia’s own Pusha T hit the MTV VMA stage and signed to Kanye‘s label, G.O.O.D. Music, and quickly started dropping singles sans his brother and former partner in crime, Malice. It seemed that The Clipse was no more, since Malice was focused on promoting his book, Wretched, Pitiful, Poor, Blind, and Naked while Pusha T was set to start his stellar solo career.
Now, it seems the duo have had a change of heart in more ways than one. Malice has undergone a religious transformation, and changed his name to No Malice. I’m not a malicious person, and I don’t really like answering to that. I know that people that follow The Clipse or follow my music, they know Malice, so I understand that, I get that. But you don’t want to be under any moniker that’s of evil intent, that’s not you. I come to more believe that there’s so much power in the tongue. The power of the tongue is life and death, so I believe if you are what you fall under whether it’s in your subconscious or not, he said last month.
He also decided to step back into the booth with his brother for a rebirth of The Clipse. In a recent interview with XXL, No Malice revealed that he and his bro are indeed back in the lab. “We’re working on that [album] now. Collecting beats, writing verses, you know Pusha is everywhere right now so it’s just a thing of matching up the scheduling, things of that nature. But the fans will definitely have music from Pusha and myself circulating about so we’re not going to leave them empty handed.”
While the promise of new music is sure to excite fans that have long awaited a reunion; they shouldn’t expect to hear the cocaine-fueled content of past Clipse records.
No Malice told Angela Yee on The Breakfast Club that the new music would certainly reflect his new outlook on life, and explained the root of his regrets. I think the content of the stuff that The Clipse always talk about, even though it’s very real, I think we did it too well. And I think some people walked away with the wrong message from that. Especially seeing a lot of our friends, manager, and people that we considered family get locked up. It’s definitely an eye opener and I really don’t want to glorify that like that any longer.
He also opened up about his battle with his depression, and noted that fame and fortune do not equate to happiness. Being in this industry for as long as I’ve been and seeing the things that I’ve seen and accumulating the things that I’ve accumulated and have all of that and still feeling empty inside, it really showed me something, said No Malice. And that’s what I find to be so ironic right now is that to be at the pinnacle of your career and to be touring and making money and having the things that you want but still not fulfilled. I just knew the life I was living wasn’t right. And you know that’s not everybody. I’m just telling my story.
While he’s committed to change The Clipse’s rep; he doesn’t discount or dismiss his previous work.
The Clipse catalog, it’s a great catalog of music. We were right there with The Neptunes at the height of the whole Star Trak thing in the Clipse, so I’m definitely proud of it, he said. And I’m even more so proud of it because it has presented me with this platform here. If I had not have had the first platform, I wouldn’t have this platform, so they all play a part with each other. It’s about evolving, it’s about growing and nothing stays the same. I would be very much ashamed if I come to you next year the same place I was three years ago. I’m seeing the big picture, and a lot of times we think we’re writing the script, but really, we’re not.