After months of rumors and concert attendance-fueled speculation, we now know that Kendrick Lamar will provide a feature verse on the highly anticipated Clipse comeback album, Let God Sort Em Out. "Chains & Whips" will surely dazzle many fans upon release, but Rob Markman acknowledged a more important story to talk about.
The hip-hop journalist and artist uploaded a YouTube video on Monday (June 2) reacting to the news regarding Kendrick Lamar's Clipse feature. He revealed that he already heard the album in full, and previewed a taste of what K.Dot will rap about on "Chains & Whips."
"Without giving too much away... the verse is less of a diss and more of a state of the union," Markman remarked. "That's the best way I can describe it. After one of the most wild years that hip-hop has ever seen, Kendrick just kind of gives it a state of the union. 'Here's where we are now, here's where I'm at now.' [...] And if it was up to UMG, we wouldn't hear it. At least not on their label."
Clipse "Chains And Whips"
What Rob Markman is referring to was revealed in Pusha T and No Malice's recent GQ interview. They were originally going to drop Let God Sort Em Out via Def Jam (and its parent company UMG). But they refused to comply with the label's requests to remove Kendrick Lamar's Clipse feature. Instead, they found a home at Jay-Z's Roc Nation.
"It wasn't even the content of the verse that scared them," Markman continued. "If you read the passage... it was the optics of Kendrick and Pusha on the same song. Two guys that Drake has had beef with. [...] They're just scared of the optics because there's this lawsuit looming and they don't want to chance it.
"And again, I blame UMG for this [request to remove the feature]," he added. "But going back to Drake, that is the danger of this lawsuit. The effects that it can have on the art, how rappers now express themselves, how we engage in competition with each other, which is a part of hip-hop. [That] can now be changed on a major label level because Drake decided to launch this lawsuit and put 'Not Like Us' square in the middle of what this is. It's dangerous and it sets a crazy precedent that can change things."
