Clipse’s “The Birds Don’t Sing” has become a breakout track from their new album, Let God Sort Em Out.
While talking to popular news broadcaster Ari Melber on MSNBC, the duo would watch a 2002 clip of an interview from their late parents discussing their music. “You start this album very deliberately, reflecting on each of your parents' passing,” Melber tells the Clipse at 9:37 mark. “I want to play just a little bit of what we found from them, if that's all right.”
The clip shows Push and Malice’s parents sitting on the couch, sharing their thoughts on the music. Their father began, saying, “It’s slow enough, you can catch the words in everything and understand what's going down.”
Then, their mother would interject, saying, “I think it's nice. I really do. It's nice. We just do not understand it.”
“That’s a very true statement,” responded a chuckling Pusha T as the clip concluded. “They did not understand it. At all.”
Clipse & Ari Melber On "The Birds Don’t Sing"
No Malice would add that even though their parents didn’t understand the music, they still supported them. ”So much so that with not understanding the rap, still supported, you know, me, with buying my beat machine, techniques, Gemini mixing with the reverb on it, microphones, you know, one Christmas,” he tells Ari Melber. “And they didn't believe in rap, but they never stunted us, always supported us.”
Melber would proceed to ask Clipse about the song’s description of their family mantra. Reciting the song’s lyrics, the host asked the following:
“With the passing, and people, some people still don't understand how much of this is truth, that we care about these lyrics and these stories, because so much of them are true. Could depend on the artists, but you feel me. You, in this opening song, you say in discussing the passing. ‘The way you miss mom / I guess I should have known / Chivalry ain't dead / You let go alone / You told me that you loved me / It was all in your tone / Absolutely. Quote, ‘I love my two sons’ was the code to your phone.”
Explaining the lyrics meaning, No Malice would revisit going through his father’s paper using the code. He explained:
“So, as I'm in the house and organizing and going through paperwork and policies, um, my dad's passwords to various things, like to his phones, to different accounts, was always some form of "I love my two sons. And I, you know, I remember telling him what the password was, but I couldn't get it out, you know, I was just letting him know. He was like, "What'd you say? What'd you say?" I was like, "Is I love my two sons? I love my two sons. But, it was just very touching.”
He continued: “My dad was all about family, you know, and even in retrospect, just looking back, I just see how huge he was on family, and that's what everybody knew him for was being about family.”
Featuring John Legend, “The Birds Don’t Sing” is the intro track that has the brothers reliving the final conversations with their parents. No Malice has shared in multiple interviews that he was the one to discover their mother and father deceased on separate occasions.
Over Pharrell’s haunting, minimalist production, Pusha T and No Malice confront guilt, loss, and spiritual conflict. No Malice’s confessional verse wrestles with redemption, while Pusha T offers a colder reckoning.
Let God Sort Em Out became the No.1 rap album this week after selling 113,000 copies in week two. The album debuted at No.4 on the Billboard 200 and surpassed Lil Wayne’s The Carter 6. Since its release on July 11, the Clipse’s reunion album has received tremendous praise for its music, merchandise, and rollout.
