During a recent interview, Steven Victor reflected on one of the obstacles Clipse faced ahead of the release of “Let God Sort Em Out.”
It’s been almost two weeks since Clipse unleashed their first album in over 15 years, Let God Sort Em Out. For the most part, the release went off without a hitch. According to the duo’s manager Steven Victor, however, they did run into one small problem.
During a recent chat with Audiomack co-founder Brian Zisook, Victor revealed that it actually took Swizz Beatz traveling to Saudi Arabia to save the day. Clipse were struggling to clear a sample of Talal Madah’s “Maza Akoulou” for their track “So Be It.” For this reason, the song was missing from streaming platforms when the album was first released. In its place was an alternate track called “So Be It Pt. II.”
“Swizz asked, ‘Why didn’t you call me about [“So Be It”]?’” Victor recalled, per AllHipHop. “I told him, ‘I did—I sent it to you.’ He said, ‘I didn’t realize it was that record. Let me handle it.’ … He said, ‘I’ll connect with the right people in person and get it resolved.’ And that’s exactly what he did.”
Clipse Let God Sort Em Out
Shortly after the release, the sample was cleared, and the final version of the track replaced the alternate on streaming platforms. This isn’t the only obstacle Clipse encountered while putting together Let God Sort Em Out either. During an interview with GQ last month, they revealed that their former label Def Jam also had a problem with Kendrick Lamar’s verse. Ultimately, this led to their decision to sign a deal with Roc Nation instead.
“They wanted me to ask Kendrick to censor his verse, which of course I was never doing,” Pusha T explained. “And then they wanted me to take the record off. And so, after a month of not doing it, Steve Gawley, the lawyer over there was like, ‘We’ll just drop the Clipse.’ But that can’t work because I’m still there [solo]. But [if] you let us all go…”
As for why exactly Def Jam had a problem with Kendrick’s verse, Pusha T says it all came down to a reference to Donald Trump. “They pinpointed a line where the phrase ‘trump card’ was used,” he told the New York Times. “So stupid. The phrase ‘trump card’ was used and they said that they didn’t want any problems with [Donald] Trump or something like that.”
