Pusha T has revealed that he once tried to get Kanye West to start his own fashion conglomerate, but the mogul chose not to take his advice.
In a recently published collection of outtakes from Clipse’s conversation with Complex alum Frazier Tharpe for GQ, a pivotal email from King Push to Ye is cited, with the former suggesting the proposal it contained marked a missed opportunity that can still be felt to this day.
Virgil Abloh, Jerry Lorenzo, and Don C — each crucial parts of the Yeezy framework at various points, and each respected names in their own right — all get specific mentions from Push, who said that he once told his former collaborator to pursue forming his own collective, or conglomerate, akin to LVMH. Abloh, notably, served as artistic director of Louis Vuitton’s menswear from 2018 until his death in 2021.
“That man knows that I was the only person who told him like, ‘Hey, man, Virgil got his line poppin… Why don’t you make your own LVMH, bro? You got Virgil. You got Yeezy. You have Just Don’s,’” Pusha T told GQ. “His issue with me is because I’m always the truth-teller.”
According to Pusha, Ye was “on his fashion journey” when he first got brought into the fold. At the time, Pusha says he closely observed Ye vying hard for a Louis Vuitton-level position, all while lamenting what Virgil, Jerry, and others from his circle were doing on their own. Ye’s influence on fashion at large was undeniably omnipresent during this period, a point Pusha says he brought up to Ye directly, first in a phone call and later in an email, albeit to no real avail.
“I said, ‘Yo, what you really need to do is’ — Virgil was doing Pyrex Vision back then — I was like, ‘Yo, what all [your boys] are doing, you need to just round that up, because everybody dressing like all of y’all anyway. And put that under your shit,'” he said.
Later, as Pusha recalled in the interview outtakes, he sent Ye an email outlining “what you need to do,” the response to which he no longer remembers. Deeper into their time together, Pusha recalled getting a call from Ye, upset about a Lorenzo and Pacsun partnership. Naturally, Pusha had to hit him with a well-earned I-told-you-so.
“I said, ‘Go back to that email,'” Pusha said. “‘Bro, I told you. I told you a long time ago that you should’ve been the head of the collective.'”
Read the full rundown of GQ interview here.
With just over a month to go until Clipse make their return with Pusha T and Malice’s first album together in over 15 years, fans were recently given a taste of what to expect from Let God Sort Em Out, with the Pharrell-produced first single “Ace Trumpets.”
The album hits streaming services on July 11. In the meantime, you can pick up a physical copy in a variety of formats, complete with cover art from previous Clipse collaborator KAWS, via the duo’s official Complex Shop page.
