Pusha T and Kanye West have been on the outs since 2022, and Pusha addressed their falling out in GQ’s new cover story on Clipse. Push told writer Frazier Tharpe that he saw their friendship headed in that direction towards the end.
“I realized at certain points that I was really alone in everything that was going on as far as rap drama,” Push said.
That notion was driven home in 2021, during the Donda sessions in Atlanta.
“I’m in a collective of a lot of individuals. Everybody’s working, but I really got shit to do, and I leave and it’s one energy, and then when I come back, the energy’s off,” Push said. “And then you hear about the sidebar conversations.”
He continued, “You got your homeboy who coming up to you like, ‘Yo, they was saying this when you left.’ I’m thinking that we all in this collectively getting busy. But in all actuality, everybody had their own agendas. And I feel like I was the only one who didn’t. My agenda was for the squad. So from that point on, I just looked at everybody differently, and I looked at it as, We’re just going to make music. We’re going to get beats. We’re going to write some raps. And we going to keep it moving.”
Push then explained that Ye has made everyone believe Push has done “a great injustice” towards him, but said that’s “a lie.”
“The one thing that I can say about him is that he knows that every issue that he’s having and crying about online right now, I’ve told him distinctly about those things,” Push said. “He don’t talk to me like he talks to others.”
Pusha acknowledged that although they made “great” music together, even acknowledging that Ye is a “genius,” but that chemistry still wasn’t enough to remain friends and collaborators.
“His intuition is even more genius-level, right? But that’s why me and him don’t get along, because he sees through my fakeness with him. He knows I don’t think he’s a man. He knows it. And that’s why we can’t build with each other no more. That’s why me and him don’t click, because he knows what I really, really think of him. He’s showed me the weakest sides of him, and he knows how I think of weak people.”
Much of Ye’s actions have been attributed to his mental health, which he’s openly discussed, but Push thinks it’s deeper than that. “You’re sick, but you’re also very calculated. And if I take your sickness and take how calculated you’ve been and disruptive you’ve been and tried to be to me, then it cancels itself out. I can’t look at it as sick, because you’re detrimental. You’re detrimental to everything.”
Even though their relationship has soured, Push recognized that Ye did him a financial solid five years ago after Push publicly expressed his unhappiness with the splits in his Def Jam contract. Ye later announced that he would give his 50 percent ownership stake in the masters of G.O.O.D. Music’s roster back to the artists—and Ye made good on that promise.
“The greatest thing he did and why I am okay with where me and him are right now—and I’m cool with staying that way—is because at the end of the day, my truth is my truth, but I still respect what he did in the business. And he speaks ill about the music we’ve made and giving me certain records, but the one thing he did give me was all the profits back from the Def Jam deal.”
Pusha parted ways with Ye and G.O.O.D. Music in late 2022 due to Ye’s antisemitic comments and right-wing affiliations, which didn’t sit right with him.
“It’s beyond that, and it’s nothing to tap dance around. It’s wrong. Period,” Push told XXL in December 2022.
Clipse’s first album in 16 years, Let God Sort Em Out is slated to be released on July 11 and is currently available in the Complex Shop.
