The last time Clipse released an album, none of the rap stars Pusha T has eviscerated through his solo bars since 2009’s then-swan song Til The Casket Drops even had careers. Let God Sort Em Out, the fourth full-length effort and return of Pusha T and Malice, isn’t trying to recreate past magic from their cocaine highs and hard-edged glory days of Aughts-era hip-hop. Though, words that cut with the precision of X-ACTO knives, and snowfall perpetually in the forecast in the brothers’ Virginia Beach sound remains their constant calling card.

This is a Clipse for modernity: a duo that lavishly boasts of riches that have only grown with time, cementing their reign atop rap’s upper echelon. They’ve clearly understood the assignment — if they’re going to drag the biggest names of commercial appeal into the hellfire and brimstone alongside a villainous industry, they’ll need to do it with even greater stone cold finesse in skill, production and allyship than they do.

Enter Pharrell — Clipse’s longtime studio mainstay and one of the rare beat-makers who stays one step ahead of stylistic currents. He delivers a soundscape for Let God Sort Em Out that’s big, slick, and full of club anthem grandeur, with just the right pocket of pretension without ever softening Clipse’s ruthless aggression or dimming the darkness in Malice’s introspections.

Major rap albums rarely lean so confidently into face-forward bangers anymore. Most are too preoccupied with gaming algorithms, padded with bloated tracklists, and drenched in post-SoundCloud stylings and Internet rap tropes that bleed into background noise. You put all of these people in the room alongside Kendrick (“Chains & Whips”), Tyler, the Creator (“P.O.V”), and Nas (“Let God Sort Em Out”/”Chandeleirs”) with common enemies in sight, and you’re getting the best of hit material. By the grace of these gods, anyone who crosses his squad’s path should be grateful to have had their bodies sorted out with such mastery.

Highlights: “Chains & Whips”, “P.O.V.”, “So Be It”

Clipse’s Let God Sort Em Out is available now on Roc Nation.

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