NEWS
In a new interview with Frazier Tharpe, for GQ, Pusha T said that he departed his longtime label home, Def Jam Recordings, over the company’s apparent reluctance to release a new Clipse song featuring a guest verse from Kendrick Lamar. “They wanted me to ask Kendrick to censor his verse, which of course I was never doing,” he claimed. “And then they wanted me to take the record off.” Ultimately, the parties agreed to go their separate ways, according to Pusha T, and Clipse’s new comeback album, Let God Sort Em Out, is being released in partnership with Jay-Z’s Roc Nation.
Pusha T’s longtime manager, Steven Victor, also discussed the rapper’s Def Jam departure in a new interview with Billboard. “Yeah, I don’t know what their concern is,” Victor said. “But they were like, ‘There’s a line here; we think it’s controversial; [Kendrick] needs to change it, or we’re not putting it out.’ We’re not going to ask him to change the verse. You guys are wrong. Stop looking at this this way. None of this makes any sense.”ss action waiver and arbitration provisions), and acknowledge our privacy policy.
According to Victor, Pusha T “had like three albums left” on his deal with Def Jam. In addition, he also claimed that the musician “had to pay seven figures to get out of the deal.”
Representatives for Def Jam Recordings and its parent company, Universal Music Group (UMG), did not respond to Pitchfork’s requests for comment.
Universal Music Group is facing active litigation from Drake, who claims that UMG “waged an unrelenting campaign” to promote Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us,” the hit diss track that Drake believes is defamatory. Both Drake and Lamar also release music through UMG-owned labels, Republic Records and Interscope Records, respectively.
Labels owned by UMG released or co-released many of the songs in the Lamar-Drake feud of 2024. For Lamar, those officially sanctioned tracks were: “Like That,” “Euphoria,” “Meet the Grahams,” and “Not Like Us.” On Drake’s side of things, he released “Push Ups” and “Family Matters” in partnership with Republic.
Years before the Kendrick Lamar and Drake imbroglio, Pusha T shared his own vicious diss track against the Canadian hip-hop superstar. Notably, Pusha T did not go through his label to drop “The Story of Adidon,” instead posting it on SoundCloud. Speaking with Billboard, Steven Victor said that Pusha T shared his song independently, in part, “to avoid” objections from Def Jam and UMG.
The new Clipse song featuring Kendrick Lamar is called “Chains & Whips,” and it played during one of Pharrell Williams’ runway shows for Louis Vuitton. It is currently unclear if the song (with or without a Kendrick Lamar verse) will appear on Clipse’s Let God Sort Em Out, which gets released on July 11.
NEWS
Brad Paisley has called Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s wedding “one of the least pretentious weddings he’s ever seen”.
The country star attended the ceremony alongside his actress wife, Kimberly Williams-Paisley. They joined around 1,000 guests at New York City’s Madison Square Garden earlier this month as the global pop icon married the American football star.
Although the celebration attracted enormous attention and involved tight security and a stunning makeover of the famous arena, Paisley said the occasion never came across as excessive.
“Ironically, (it) was one of the least pretentious weddings that I've ever seen or ever will see,” Paisley told The Associated Press during an interview. “It meant a lot to be (invited). It was, kind of, a big thank you from her to invite us.”
Paisley, who chose Swift as an opening performer for his tour when she was a teenager in 2007, said he was delighted to be included in what many considered the biggest celebrity wedding of the year.
“They were very clear with the invite, and I took this personally when I got the invite, because in the invite, it said, ‘If you're getting this, you mean a lot to us,’” he revealed.
The musician also explained that guests were not told the wedding’s exact location until the date drew nearer.
“It was really fun to watch the cat and mouse game of, like, ‘We can tell you roughly where it's going to be, we're not gonna say what building... and here's the date. If you're in, we'll tell you more,’” he continued. “I went to my wife, I said, ‘Want to go?’ and she said, ‘Absolutely, we gotta be there!’ So, we did it, it was RSVP yes.”
Other famous attendees included Brad Pitt, Gigi Hadid, Bradley Cooper, Ed Sheeran, Sabrina Carpenter, Hugh Grant, Haim and Tom Hanks.
