The Truth!

A final entry for 2024... and pics from Miami

What a year! You know?

This is my newsletter entry to end 2024, so I wish you a great holiday and New Year, and quality time with friends & family! And thank you for taking an interest in your community, country, democracy, culture and some of my work, however you keep up with it. This new entry includes:

• A voice note with my year-end thoughts

• A new piece drawing on an interview I did at an art fair in Miami…

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Even 2024 had to end…

“2024,” Image generated via Chat GPT AI.

Press the blue PLAY arrow to hear my new voice note for you (5 minutes):

Pushing Truth

Pusha T is a rapper who has prioritized artistry, patience and grit over the music industry’s pressures. He first distinguished himself by building an organic following without moving to a rap hub like New York, LA or Atlanta. Instead, he made music with his brother in their hometown of Virginia Beach, founding the duo Clipse in 1992, with a boost from Pharrell Williams, one of Virginia’s most acclaimed musicians. (You can hear Pusha’s signature sound on this song inspired by the classic “Jealous Guy.”)

Super-producer Pharrell Williams (far left) with Pusha and his bride, Virginia, in their official wedding photo.

Then Pusha went solo, finding longevity in a field full of “flashes in the pan.” Though I’ve met him a few times over the years, our first interview didn’t happen until recently.

We talked before a live crowd at a Saint & Citizen Event for Art Basel, Miami’s annual visual arts festival. Pusha’s last album is called “It’s Almost Dry,” because when people ask about a pending album, he says '“it’s almost dry,” like a painting in progress. So maybe it was fitting we sat down to talk at an art festival.

Interviewing Pusha T in Miami (via @RealRyanKPhoto)

In person, Pusha comes across very real and present. (“Authentic,” to use an overused word.) While people want truth from all kinds of artists, this matters more in hip hop, where sharing one’s real self and story is paramount.

“Rapping about my own life”

Rappers are expected to recount their own experiences, and write their own lyrics. That is not a universal standard in modern music.

Other genres openly tap songwriters, with no secrecy or shame. There is a whole Hall of Fame just for songwriters, celebrating people who primarily write for other performers. In hip hop, however, using an outside writer is an artistic scandal. It’s considered a deceptive trick; such writers are called “ghostwriters” (not songwriters). Pusha has always represented and respected that code. On a popular song with Chief Keef, Pusha raps about how “fraud” is something he doesn’t like, contrasting other artists’ “make believe” rhymes to “rapping about my own life.”

In our discussion, he said that artistic honesty is tested over time.

“It’s about who can stay the purest the longest, that’s what this game is about,” Pusha told me.

Pusha’s commitment to that type of hip hop was a big theme in one of his most famous feuds, when he had a heated, personal rap battle with Drake in 2018. While Drake has sold far more records, Pusha accused him, among other things, of using ghostwriters and essentially secretly coopting and stealing other people’s work.

If that sounds familiar, it was also an attack used by Kendrick Lamar in his battle with Drake this past year. While Drake has been a top rap artist for over a decade, it’s widely agreed he has lost two rap battles in his career — to Pusha and Kendrick. Both times, Drake’s artistic integrity and practices were impugned in the war of words.

Kendrick, the first solo rapper to headline the Super Bowl halftime show next year, praised Pusha in his dis tracks against Drake. (It all gets pretty intricate.) I asked Pusha about that, and he spoke on it for the first time.

Kendrick “was just telling [Drake] he needed to address me, before he comes back and tries to go at him,” Pusha said. He thought Kendrick won this year’s battle — unsurprising from an ally but also the general view — and explained why:

Kendrick is a lyricist that talks to your soul. You can be clever, you can say cute things, you can do things in cadences and so on and so forth, right? [Referring to Drake] But the truth really hurts. The truth cuts deep.

I think what Kendrick was doing was really talking to his soul.

As we talked, Pusha also humbly suggested why Kendrick’s win broke through more than his own:

It’s a very niche group that messes with me. So, it’s easy to ‘dismiss’ my wins because it’s not as loud as everyone else’s.

Kendrick, on the other hand, his music is super popular, so it’s a difference.

“I can dig rapping, but a rapper with a ghostwriter?!
What the hell happened?”

Rap battles are a special competitive art. No official rules, no official scorekeeper — just two poets deploying their craft, against each other, in real time. If you don’t follow the craft, it may all sound like a foreign language, or some arcane sport. If you do follow it, the details can prove more interesting. (Our interview made over 20 headlines in music outlets like Billboard, VIBE, and Hot 97, largely focused on Pusha’s battle commentary.)

Pusha insists Drake always lacked a crucial truth and authenticity (“street cred”), and thus his foes could capitalize on that mismatch in battle. And note how Pusha diminishes Drake’s singing and performance side (“cadences,” etc) — which wouldn’t even make sense in a competition over, say, singing or dancing. But this is hip hop. The core is truth and words, for many purists, not the notes. And the genre certainly has no “Ghostwriters Hall of Fame.”

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Bonus round…

A few final points from our discussion:

• Pusha said there’s no technology available today that he wishes he had growing up; he thinks his skills and hustle are stronger from emerging in a time without iPhones and the Internet. Young artists now watch the world more than experience it, he said, and some are not “exploring” or “getting outside” enough.

• Pusha told me his original group, Clipse, will release their first album since 2009, which also made news:

  

• I asked Pusha to complete this sentence:
  
  Hip hop matters because…
  
  “it transmits culture to the world, better than any other thing.”
  
  (Lots of people around the world agree.)

• It can be revealing to hear what different people think constitutes success and failure, and I often ask people that in simple terms. Pusha’s answer was:
  
  Failure can only happen when you don’t try.

That’s a fitting thought for heading into the new year. Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments and I’ll read and reply to some as always! Ari

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