Control · Fall 2026Page 67 of 100.THE REVIEW

A center aisle runs between rows of empty pews. The title of the Clipse’s first album since 2009 reads like a sermon, and the brothers deliver it without mercy.The photograph is by Budget Bizar on Pexels.

Review

Sixteen years on, the knives are still sharp.

Let God Sort Em Out, the first Clipse album since 2009, finds Pusha T and Malice back with Pharrell Williams and in no hurry to make peace.

Written by CONTROL

This article runs 444 words and takes about two minutes to read.

9out of 10

Album: Let God Sort Em Out
By: Clipse
From: Clipse, through Roc Nation, 2025

Reunion albums are usually a form of accounting. The band returns, settles its old debts with the audience and leaves before anyone checks the math. Let God Sort Em Out, the first Clipse album since Til the Casket Drops in 2009, refuses that arrangement. Pusha T and Malice, the Thornton brothers of Virginia Beach, do not sound like men revisiting a legend. They sound like men who kept sharpening the knife for fifteen years and simply waited for a reason to use it.

Part of the reason was grief. The album opens with “The Birds Don’t Sing,” in which the brothers address their late parents over a hymnlike arrangement with John Legend and the gospel group Voices of Fire. It is a startling way to begin a record by a duo whose reputation rests on cocaine metaphors, and it sets the terms for everything after it. The drug talk is still here, precise and cold, but it now sits beside mortality, faith and the particular tiredness of middle age.

Rows of dark wooden pews fill a dim church interior. — Rows of polished pews fill a darkened sanctuary. Pusha T and Malice have always rapped like men who know the difference between confession and boasting, and here they allow themselves both.The photograph is by Francesco Ungaro on Pexels.

Ornately carved wooden choir stalls stand against a stone wall in a dim chapel. — Carved wooden stalls stand in a stone chapel lit from one side. Reunited with Pharrell Williams, the Clipse sound less like men seeking forgiveness than men waiting on judgment.The photograph is by ClickerHappy on Pexels.

The old partnership resumes

Pharrell Williams produced all thirteen tracks, and the partnership that shaped Lord Willin’ and Hell Hath No Fury picks up as if it had only paused. The beats are skeletal and strange, built from clipped drums and chiming figures that leave enormous room for the voices. Pusha remains the sharper technician, all consonants and sneer. Malice, who spent years away from rap as a born-again Christian recording under the name No Malice, is the album’s surprise. His verses carry the weight of a man who has thought hard about what the old life cost.

The guests mostly earn their places. Kendrick Lamar’s verse on “Chains & Whips” became news before the album did, after a dispute with Def Jam that ended with the duo leaving the label and releasing the record through Roc Nation. Tyler, the Creator is loose and funny on “P.O.V.,” and Nas lends the title track the calm of a man with nothing left to win.

The flaws are small and real. Pharrell’s featured turns, on “So Far Ahead” and “By the Grace of God,” sometimes tilt the record toward the polish of his day job as a fashion-house creative director, and a few tracks in the back half trade menace for luxury. At about forty-one minutes, though, the album never overstays, and its best verses show two writers working at the top of their craft more than two decades after their debut.

The verdict: this is the rare comeback that adds to a legacy instead of living off it. Play it in one sitting, from the funeral at the start to the benediction at the end.