The Insane True Story of PUSHA T

Pusha T is one of my favorite artists of all time and 2022 was one of the biggest years of his career because this is the year he finally achieved his first ever number one album on the Billboard charts Pusha T has been recording music since 1996 26 years ago that's a longer career than any artist I've ever covered on volksgeist that's four years older than me but in the last 26 years of working on his craft and improving his sound he's become one of the best artists in the industry with some of my all-time favorite albums Pusha T is an artist who continues to improve his formula over and over again so let's talk about why Pusha T as one of the longest and most interesting careers of any artist in music today Pusha T was born Terence Thornton in New York City in the Bronx in 1977 but he grew up in the City of Virginia Beach when his family moved to the southeast while he was still in elementary school in the early 90s pusha's older brother Jean was going by the rep named malice and working with future Legend Pharrell Williams who was also from Virginia Beach as early as 1992 while Pusha was still in high school it was actually Pharrell Williams that originally gave them the idea to become a duo in the first place after hearing Pusha rap for the first time when he had originally only been a bystander while his older brother recorded in the mid 90s Pharrell was able to help the brothers secure a record deal with Elektra records so they could record produce and release a debut album under the name Clips the first Clips album exclusive audio footage was produced entirely by The Neptunes Pharrell's duo with Chad Hugo and Pusha used the rap name terrar as a play on the words Terror and his own name Terence as he and his brother malice began to build the Sinister villainous personas it's still defined pusha's work to this day but their start was far from Easy their first single the funeral didn't sell very well and before they even had an opportunity to release their first album their recording contract was canceled and the record was never released having your album canceled and getting dropped from your label for poor sales before your career even gets started is pretty bad but once again the brothers were basically saved by Pharrell when two years later in 2001 he signed them to his Star Trek label so they could start over and record Another debut album called lord willin once again entirely produced by The Neptunes and Lord willin did end up being a big break for Clips once it was finally released in 2002 Lord willin immediately jumped number four on the Billboard charts and sold 122 000 copies in its first week later being ranked as one of the best debut albums of all time by Rolling Stone even 20 years ago Pusha and his brother were rapping about drug deal and my personal favorite song from Lord willin is I'm not you where you get to hear some early foreshadowing of the paths that they would eventually go down right from the first moments of Pusha T's career he and his brother were basing their entire sound around stories about dealing drugs but it wasn't long before at least one of them seemed conflicted on their actions on I'm not you even at the start of their Fame malice specifically seemed conflicted about the effect that his dealing had had on his community he raps it shames me to no end to feed poison to those who could very well be my kin but when there's demand someone will supply so I feed them their needs at the same time cry yes it pains me to see them need this all of them lost souls and I'm their Jesus deepest regret and sympathy to the streets I seen him pay for their fix when their kids could and with this in mind I still didn't quit and that's how I know that I ain't [ __ ] even though the next eclipse album Hell hath no fury is generally considered one of the best hip-hop albums of the 2000s it didn't sell very well despite peeking at only number 14 on the charts it was a sonically inventive edgy claustrophobic and paranoid underrated Masterpiece they say we homies but I see hatred do not they know Brotherly Love is sacred [ __ ] catch feelings even contemplate killings following their second album Eclipse ran into another major label issue again when their label Star Trek was merged as part of a bigger acquisition and they somehow ended up being forced onto jive a much more pop focused label that was known for artists like Chris Brown and Justin Timberlake it just wasn't a good fit for the clip sound and it wasn't long before push and Malice started to feel overlooked and unsupported by the label after a few years they finally got off the label and dropped what would be their final record till the casket drops but unfortunately this album didn't end up being a hit it was their worst chart performance yet peaking at number 46 on the charts and it seemed like their popularity had peaked in a later interview more than 10 years later pushed T stated that he disowns this album and he absolutely hates how it sounds compared to the rest of the clip's discography it was around the time of till the casket drops that pusha's brother malice started to feel a certain way about the music they were making he had become interested in Christianity and pursuing a better moral code for his life and it seemed like he was no longer proud of the messages they were putting out into the world during an interview with Vlad TV just a few years ago he spoke about how when he and push were teenagers in Virginia they had two parents at home who were strict with them and that for him and push drug dealing was never about making ends meet or keeping the lights on but they did it because they wanted to buy nice clothes and shoes not only were they doing bad things to their Community but it came from a place of vanity and not struggle or need what do you think as a teenager what was the hardest thing that you went through I I don't think I went through any hard things you know we have a dad that's like six two six three so we knew not to bring no trouble home like we come from a total uh functional house you know it didn't make sense for us to even be selling drugs we don't have the proverbial uh drug selling story uh you know I had to feed my kids or lights was getting cut out we were just doing it because we wanted to have the the latest fashion the the fly kicks you know um and even at that age we were very intellectual so we had the the all of the the benefits of the drug dealing without all the the nonsense he also described how he and push were intellectual from a young age and I think that's really the key to understanding how the Persona of Pusha T and his brother formed into what it still is today in order to tell stories about something you have to have a gift for storytelling not every drug dealer is automatically going to be able to write a hit rap album about the Grim realities of what he did but if someone like push and his brother come along with some experience but also a great talent for telling stories and writing lyrics is that make their music any less real even if the stories they tell aren't necessarily completely their own experience does that make the story itself less impactful a lot of the most famous stories of our time like the wire the TV show is an amazing show but it wasn't created by someone who was actually a character in the show it was created by an observer a police reporter not a cop or a drug dealer like the characters in the show but someone whose job it was to watch and learn how those Dynamics worked and the same goes for Clips Pusha and Malice May have actually been the kingpins in their stories but they saw enough to tell some really good stories anyway I do think this quote from a 2007 interview with LA Times is pretty funny though it says the bus that Clips have called home for the past week on their tour is tidy and well organized there's no such thing as a mess on our tour bus Pusha T says the clips keep it clean and sober in their recording sessions too when we're in the studio we don't need a pack of blunts we don't need four guns laying on the table or a bottle of Hennessy he says it's not that rapper thing Pusha T says he's never tried cocaine and he thinks smoking marijuana is corny he and Malice his older brother by five years have never been arrested for any drug dealing offenses yet the clips have become famous for rapping about drug hustling a common theme in hip-hop so after their third album malice changed his rap name to No Malice and he decided that he could no longer promote violence and Chaos with his music and clips broke up in 2010. shortly after Pusha T joined Kanye West's good music label while No Malice left the music industry forever and with that the next part of Pusha T's career began up until the point where Pusha started on his solo career he and his his brother had always been known as a group and it wasn't clear if he would Thrive as a solo artist after so many years on a team together he was gonna have to work hard to avoid being called that guy from clips for the rest of his life but then he dropped one of the most infamous guest features ever on a Kanye album for the centerpiece song Runway from Dark Twisted Fantasy and if anyone was wondering if push could make it on his own the incredible quality of that verse contained an answer Pusha T was just getting started his first official project after being signed to Kanye's good music was fear of God too some critics wrote that Pusha was out of place in Kanye's Avent guard emotional artistic label which sounds weird now because The Pusher we know today has one of the most interesting sounds of any rapper out there but fear of God too even if it didn't come out in 2011 I could definitely guess that it did anyway outside of a few songs the beat selection on this project just isn't good I really like raid which is produced by The Neptunes and also Trouble on My Mind which features a 20 year old Tyler the Creator doing a hard rap first on top of an odd future beat but besides that 90 of the Beats on here are chest full of air horns and overly loud dance since that didn't age well at all [Music] Porsche is still a really good rapper in Storyteller with the same Grim nihilistic lyrics as always but he's the type of artist who needs a producer with a vision give his albums a personality a sequence in a direction that this Project's fear of God too didn't really have so Pusha T's second and third solo albums my name is my name and King push darkest before Dawn were huge improvements on the sound of his first record my name is my name which dropped in 2013 just a few months after Jesus is a much more stylish and refined album than the Pusha T projects that came before it probably in many ways thanks to Kanye and the rest of the good music crew handling the majority of the album's production and sequencing it's a very cinematic luxurious glamorous sounding album with some dark and cold instrumentals and is definitely inspired by the Cruel Summer sound that was popular among the good music team at the time Johnson and Johnson I started out as a baby face monster no wonder is diaper rash on my conscience I would completely understand if someone said that this was their all-time favorite Pusha T project but for me I don't think this compares to the Pusha T releases that would come after it in terms of a whole album experience I think there are some great songs like Nostalgia numbers on the boards snitch and suicide produced by Pharrell and the intro track King push which shares multiple samples from Blood on the leaves from Jesus overall this is a pretty good album that I think a lot of newer Pusha T fans may not have listened to but it still really wasn't to the level of style and polish that Pusha T was about to reach in the next few years my name is my name debuted at number four on the Billboard charts and sold 100 000 copies in under three weeks [Music] Darkness Before Dawn is pusha's next record and even though it ended up with the lowest chart performance of any of pusha's solo albums speaking at number 20 on the Billboard charts I think it has the most interesting sound and execution of anything he had made so far it's full of these dark wonky beats that range from groovy to creepy and I think it's the first solo album Pusher made that isn't just a pretty good record but a great piece of music every single song on King push is heavily stylized with amazing unusual production sounds from some of the best producers of the mid-2010s and push himself brought his A-game with a more confident delivery and Persona than ever before check me out crutches crosses caskets crutches crosses caskets I almost felt like a lot of Pusha T's early solo stuff just felt uneven even if it was still good music but King push doesn't suffer from that problem at all this is the Cinematic movie-like album he was always meant to make and to me it's the midpoint between the before and after of Pusha T's discographer this album fully realizes that Unique Edge that Pusha T is known for today in a way that he hadn't quite achieved before this is the record that people were calling a Tony Montana Scarface Adventure in musical form and it doesn't sound dated like his other ones either while my name is my name sounds almost terminally 2012 this album isn't much newer but it still feels much more fresh today and there really isn't a single bad song on it from the dark Bassy intro produced by Metro Boomin to the way the dream steals the show on mftr in songs like crutches crosses and caskets got them covered and keep dealing feature some of the most interesting production of any songs from this era it's easy to see why Pusha T was gaining so much respect so quickly this album was a huge step forward for Pusha T losing his association with his brother and earning his own reputation as the darkest coldest rapper around so while maybe King push wasn't the biggest commercial success it was cold hard proof that Pusha T was continuing to grow with each new project and he was far from done with his artistic Evolution this is definitely one of my favorite albums from 2015 and I still listen to it all the time to this day and while this was a big move for Pusha his next move ended up lighting his name on fire in the middle of his Smash Hit 2018 record Daytona which ended up as one of the highest ranked albums of the year he came out in the open with a direct diss to Drake after years of throwing repeated back and forth subliminal shots and what happened next was one of the most shocking rap beef moments in recent history Pusha T has never been a stranger to the age-old tradition of rap beef back when he was still in Clips he beefed for years with frequent Kanye collaborator consequence after consequence accused him of not being a real drug dealer and Pusha also beef with Lil Wayne over the years but nothing was ever as serious or personal as the beef between Drake and Pusha T so let's start at the beginning it All Began back when Drake was still a newcomer and rap and Lil Wayne was his mentor basically Drake got caught in the crossfire after pusha's tracked Exodus 23 1 where he dissed Drake for just being associated with Wayne Drake dissed him right back on the intro track to Nothing Was the Same calling Pusha T a bench player acting like a starter they continued to subliminally diss each other for a few years after with all of it essentially boiling down to accusing each other of having fake and authentic rap personas but the beef didn't really heat up until 2018 when Pusha T officially fired some serious shots at Drake by accusing him of using a Ghost Rider to write his songs he explicitly said how could you ever write these wrongs when you don't even write your songs which of course is one of the most serious accusations you could make against any musical artist if their lyrics aren't their own are they even who they say they are at all but Drake wasn't gonna lay down and take it so later that same day he released a full-on diss track aimed at Pusha T and Kanye at the same time full of the harshest most serious and personal insults he could think of it was brutal Drake was name dropping push his wife claiming that Kanye was a snake he said that he wrote music for Kanye and Wyoming uncredited he claimed that Pusha was never a drug dealer his entire Persona was made up he said that Pusha is a loser for having Kanye as his mentor when he's older than him it's honestly a sharp biting brutal diss track but nothing could have possibly prepared Drake for what was going to happen next it turns out Porsche had been waiting for exactly the right moment to reveal the ultimate trump card to destroy Drake and forever stain his reputation Pusha had found out that Drake secretly had a son he had never acknowledged in public among dozens of other brutal insults about his family his identity his Artistry and his race including cover art that depicted Drake in blackface Pusher revealed to the world that Drake was a deadbeat dad and Pusha even know that Drake had been planning to reveal his son's existence with a promotional marketing deal from Adidas ultimately Drake never responded to the discs and most people understand that Pusha absolutely destroyed Drake's credibility in a lot of ways about a year later Drake's book about how the beef with Pusha T was really his first loss in any rap beef whatsoever but more than that it's one of the worst rap beef L's of all time Pusha had humiliated Drake to the point where he had no way to even respond at all and he's continued to dis-drake in the years after specifically as a guest on other people's songs it didn't even end up coming out because the associated artists weren't comfortable with having a diss on their tracks that's how hard push-up won the beef between Pusha T and Drake was such a bloodbath that it almost overshadowed the Masterpiece of an album that Pusha had released at the same time Daytona was easily one of the best albums of 2018 if not the best rap album from that year every criticism that was ever made against pusha's solo albums was suddenly made irrelevant he had undoubtedly unanimously created a fully realized Masterpiece Daytona was only 21 minutes long but many people considered it one of the best albums of 2018 of any genre it was produced entirely by Kanye and the record is full of sharp dark minimal beats and it was a huge success being nominated for best rap album at the Grammys being named in the top 10 best albums of the Year by more than 20 major Publications like Rolling Stone complex billboard and Esquire Johnson and Johnson I started out as a baby face monster no wonder is diaper rash on my conscience my teething ring was numb Daytona is full of powerful imagery first of all the cover art is one of the most controversial album Arts I can think of off the top of my head with not a depiction but a real-life picture of Whitney Houston's drug-filled bathroom on the night she died the record was originally going to be named King push but his title was changed to Daytona just two days before it dropped after the legendary Rolex Daytona series which can be some of the most coveted and expensive watches available in the world obviously this is in line with the themes of expensive and luxurious taste that have always been part of pusha's music but he also said that the name had a symbolic meaning too Daytona represents the luxury of time and according to Pusha the luxury of time only comes when you have a skill set that you're confident in and for Pusha T that skill is rapping even before the rapping though Daytona's production is Miles better than anything push had done before and he was already improving quickly I mean obviously Kanye was on fire back in 2018 and the album is full of distorted sample heavy beats that have sharp edgy sounding guitars a lot like the production from kids see ghosts which was made at the same time but well that album had a grungy alternative feeling that I would almost say was warm atona is the opposite side of the same coin while kids see ghosts has an almost warm fuzz that gives it a pure wholesome feeling on songs like reborn Cudi Montage fire Daytona used that same texture to create a soundscape that's infinitely darker colder and more demented foreign takes over let's talk this Paola payo you killed God's baby when it wasn't his will it really isn't that much to say about the storytelling on Daytona not in a bad way Pusha has always been a sharp strong clever writer I mean he really knows how to write a song he's been doing it for 26 years no one would ever say he can't and Daytona is full of great verses but at the same time he sometimes gets criticism for being a one-dimensional character in his music people love to say that Pusha has been writing about the same bag of coke for 25 years and that he isn't as genuine as he seems that he's just making the same songs over and over about the same subject but I don't think that's a valid criticism of his art I think repetition and consistency is one of the best paths toward making great art especially music Pusha talks about this a little bit on the song Let The Smokers Shine the coops from his latest album it's almost dry or he wraps the line cocaine's Dr Seuss which is a bar that has two obvious meanings obviously this is a reference to Dr Seuss being iconic for his surrealist cartoon stories and push-up being iconic for his drug dealing stories but I think if it was that simple he could have called himself the cocaine anything the cocaine Mark Twain the cocaine JK Rowling if he just wanted to have a bar about being famous for telling stories I think the Dr Seuss comparison actually tells a deeper story about who Pusha T is and I'm gonna try to find a way to say this without sounding corny but when it comes to cartoons Dr Seuss is that guy there's no one who's more recognizable when it comes to character designs and style in children's books to the point where even adults can appreciate his different styles but he didn't get that way by having a million different styles he got that way by making his style so prolific it was impossible to avoid and I think that's what Pusha has been doing for the last 10 years since he became a solo artist he started as a rapper who has stories to tell about being rich selling Coke and navigating the danger and chaos and enemies that come to try and take his status away and that's what he's still doing now if you listen to the intro for my name is my name and then fast forward nine years to the intro track from Daytona the writing is very similar the stories are very similar the delivery is very similar I would bet that there are some old Pusha T verses that are so similar to what he makes now and he could re-record or even just remastered them for a new album and they wouldn't sound out of place but when you zoom out and look at his first three albums against his last two they are very very distinctly different pieces of music despite the basic ingredients being more or less the same of course Pusha T's earlier albums are good but Daytona and it's almost dry these are great more Awards higher sales better reviews pusha's first number one album after 25 years of making music every single project he makes gets better than the last so what changed in pusha's art Direction and creative process in the last five years to make his latest work so heavily improved well first of all I think getting together with Kanye and joining good music was huge for him I mean obviously Pusha ended up featuring on one of the most iconic Kanye songs of all time just a few months after signing giving runaway a sharp edgy rap verse compliment Kanye's sentimental delivery what I'm trying to say is they were an insanely powerful combo from the very beginning and a lot of music that Pusha T released between 2010 and 2018 was very good but most of it wasn't great he made some great songs but in terms of albums he wasn't there yet and it showed in his reviews and showed in his chart performance that a big part of what push really needed to get to the next level was to go from a long list of producers to a very short list I think going from 25 producers credited on King push darkest before Dawn to just three producers on Daytona is one of the big changes that pushed Pusha T to the next level I think it makes sense that specifically working closely with one producer works the best for an artist like Pusha T to truly unlock his potential on these albums he's an artist who's locked into a style over the years and there's no better way to complement that consistency than by working with a producer who can execute a similar control over the way the album looks and sounds Daytona is one of the best rap albums in the last five years it was great when it came out and it still sounds great now the production is powerful and stylized OSHA is as sharp as ever and it has a cohesive feel that none of his albums had before whereas my name is my name is full of Beats that might sound poorly aged or almost corny today Daytona doesn't have to claim to be luxurious and classy it sounds that way too it's almost dry as push his most recent album and it's by far his most ambitious work yet in many ways I think it feels like a sequel to Daytona but this time bigger and better it's his second album to be nominated for a Grammy after Daytona and it's his first album to ever debut at number one on the charts it's almost dry was co-produced by Kanye and Pharrell his two closest collaborators throughout his career and compared to Daytona it definitely branches out more with more songs more features a wider range in the production Styles while still keeping the same level of polished presentation as Daytona it's almost dry is also full of Full Circle callbacks and themes that relate to pusha's Identity and story as an artist first of all the album is co-produced by the two closest mentors of his career and secondly the closing track I pray for you is one of the first times his brother No Malice as featured on one of his songs since his solo career began 10 years ago or who I forsaken all the rules it's almost dry it ended up being the first number one album of Pusha T's career and the second to be nominated for best rap album at the Grammys not because he listened to the people that say he always raps about the same things but because he continued to make better and better versions of the same stories and the same themes until he perfected his formula most musical artists just don't last it's really easy to do some crazy [ __ ] or make a wild song and get a little buzz or ride away but having a music career that only continues to get more and more interesting successful and substantial over a period of 20 years is basically unheard of you can have such a rapid rise to the top and have so much potential but there are 10 times more to babies and little pumps than there are Pusha T's Kanye's and Pharrell's in the music industry so when people say hey push a t you know he always tells the same stories he always raps about the same things I think of course he does do you know anyone who's been rapping and getting better and better and more popular for 26 years he started rapping when Kendrick Lamar was nine years old he started rapping when Lil Baby was under a a year old he was rapping before little dark knew how to read Pusha T has been rapping before Playboy cardi Yeet Roddy rich and baby Keem were born you think all of these guys are gonna keep making music for another 25 years and somehow reach New Heights each time new Awards new sales records new hits how many artists who are in the first five years of their popularity right now will last another 20 years and just keep getting better it's impossible to predict but history can give us a pretty good answer almost none of them Pusha T is one of the only living artists who has not only continued to be popular for more than 20 years but is still reaching new artistic and Commercial Heights with each passing project so yes he might be an artist who tells similar stories with a similar delivery each time but I don't think that's a problem I think that's what every artist who makes music for this long will end up doing but the only issue is most artists aren't good enough to get to that point in the first place Pusha T's consistency as a rapper isn't a weakness or a flaw it's not the same stories over and over it's him constantly improving on his formula to the point where no one can deny he makes not just good albums but great ones ninety percent of rappers who are popping right now have five years left in the spotlight at the maximum and Pusha T is lapping most of them while he's old enough to be their father that isn't repetitive it's hard work dedication and talent that's good music as always I'm Philip this is volksgeist and thank you for watching

Channel: Volksgeist

Views: 366,560

Keywords: volksgeist, pusha t, Philip damico, video essay, its almost dry, daytona

Id: RFnxyveMht4

Length: 24min 31sec (1471 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 04 2022