Arrogance & excellence
Being evil in your art, rocking cool under-the-radar clothes, not driving a Honda Fit & more with the legend Pusha T
Our interviews with Cameron Winter of Geese, SC103, Christophe Lemaire, Ryota Iwai from Auralee, Sarah Squirm, Adam Sandler, Nathan Fielder, Brendan from Turnstile, Seth Rogen, MJ Lenderman, Maya Hawke, Bon Iver, André 3000, Eckhaus Latta, Matty Matheson, Laraaji, John C. Reilly, Father John Misty, Michelle Williams, Clairo, Steven Yeun, Conner O’Malley, Tyler, The Creator & more are here.
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— Jonah & Erin
Pusha T is one of the all-time great rappers. A solo act and one-half of Clipse, he came up in the small-yet-musical-genius-heavy Virginia Beach hip-hop scene of the late ‘90s and early 2000s — a scene that also gave the world Missy Elliott, Timbaland, Teddy Riley and Pharrell Williams.
Pharrell has been a close collaborator of Push’s since Day One. This is tight not only because you love to see childhood friends linking, building & making moves across many decades, but also because Push has a way of coaxing out Pharrell’s hardest, weirdest, coolest sounds.
And as fantastic as their music together is? You could make a strong case that the many songs Pusha T has made with Kanye — among them “Runaway,” “Mercy,” “Numbers on the Board” and “If You Know You Know” — are even harder, weirder, and cooler.
A quick word on “Numbers on the Boards.” Erin and I (Jonah) have listened to this song 300+ times easy. It captures Pusha T’s mix of sly humor and seething, borderline-sociopathic ferocity; his gift for gliding over sparse, amelodic, oblong tracks; the pleasure he takes from deceptively dense wordplay; and his conceptual-art-grade commitment to the topic of drug dealing, which he has rapped about to the exclusion of virtually anything else since ~1994.
Besides making sick songs, Pusha T also wears some sick clothes of the under-the-radar kind we love here at the Plane, including pieces by Spyfriend Camiel Fortgens, Craig Green, and Martine Rose, among other independent designers.
And in a curveball, next month he’s putting out a coffee with Pharrell called Grindin, in partnership with the Italian behemoth Lavazza. They made two blends, the darker of which has notes of “caramel, cacao and spices,” as Push described it to me recently, and is designed to function as “task-driven” jet fuel. Here at Spyplane HQ, our No. 1 coffee in the world is a single-origin artisan light-roast we love to savor while accomplishing no tasks whatsoever, but to each his own baby!
The other day I was stoked to hop on the Spyphone with Pusha T for a conversation about getting evil in your art, and whether the abyss does in fact gaze back into you when you do; rocking cool clothes from underground labels; whether he’s ever driven a Honda Fit; why he has never done a psychedelic and never will; and more “unbeatable topics.”
Blackbird Spyplane: This is crazy to think about, but I interviewed you and Malice 20 years ago, right before Hell Hath No Fury came out. And then Malice thanked me in the liner notes of the CD, but you wrote something like, “F--k a shout out!
Pusha T: “Ahahaha.”
Blackbird Spyplane: Do you wanna make things right and thank me now?
Pusha T: “I can’t. I gotta stay true. That’s my favorite album, everything about it. Even the lack of acknowledgments.”
Blackbird Spyplane: One thing that’s always struck me about your music is this persona you created where you’re unafraid to go to dark, sometimes evil places. Biggie had the famous line about dealing drugs in order to feed his daughter, but you’ve never justified it like that, and you’ve never looked for any sympathy. It’s more, “I turned people into zombie fiends, I ruined their lives, I got rich.”
Pusha T: “M hm.”
Blackbird Spyplane: I’ve talked to actors who’ve gone deep into dark roles, and they’ve told me it takes a toll, to where they almost need a detox on the other side, to pull themselves back from the abyss of that character’s mind. Has there ever been a similar thing for you, where leaning into the more evil parts of your persona takes a toll?
Pusha T: “I don’t think so. I know how to compartmentalize all of this. And when it comes to music, I look at it like I look at movies and TV series. I’m an A&E guy. I love documentary-style shows. I love horror when it actually feels like it can happen — not CGI green-screen horror, I’m not into that. I’m into things that bring real fear into it.
“So for me lyrically, there’s just an energy, an arrogance, and a level of animosity that helps me get my point across. It’s letting me get some s--t out, but it’s doing it artistically. People aren’t true enough, people don’t speak the truth off-the-cuff enough. So I think that’s what you’re getting with these Jekyll & Hyde type of moments, man. It’s just how the f--k I feel.”
Blackbird Spyplane: Have you ever driven a Honda Fit?
Pusha T: “A Honda what?”
Blackbird Spyplane: A Honda Fit. It’s a small Honda, very maneuverable, snub-nose, surprisingly large cargo capacity. From the outside it might look like any small car, but they’ve got a cult of real ones around them.
Pusha T: “Yeah? Okay...”
Blackbird Spyplane: It occurred to me I’ve never had the pleasure of driving a McLaren or some other Pusha-T-ass whip, and then I wondered if you’ve ever had the pleasure of driving a Honda Fit.
Pusha T: “To be honest, I never have.”
Blackbird Spyplane: Does it sound at all intriguing to you?
Pusha T: “Not at all.”
Blackbird Spyplane: Another thing I’m curious about: Have you ever taken LSD or mushrooms?
Pusha T: “No, sir. I have no interest in it. Kids be trying s--t and dying, man.”
Blackbird Spyplane: Dying off mushrooms??
Pusha T: “No, not off mushrooms, but they have all these habits and pills that are supposed to be fun, and a lot them are dying from ‘em. I’m at a time in my life where my health is more important to me. I’d rather not tamper. I’ve done enough tampering.”
Blackbird Spyplane: Let’s see if we can go 0 for 3 with these “Have you evers.” Have you ever read Moby-Dick?
Pusha T: “Man, I was supposed to read it, but I probably lied and read the Clif Notes instead.”
Blackbird Spyplane: I’d never read it, either, but I finally dove in a few weeks back, I just finished it the other day, and it’s great. What’s the last book you loved?
Pusha T: “I just listened to the audiobook of Willy Falcon and Sam Magluta, the Cocaine Cowboys of Miami. It was so interesting. That took me a few days on my treadmill. I don’t read novels so much as nonfiction. I need to know there’s that truth to it.”
Blackbird Spyplane: We write a lot about style here. How important are clothes to your sense of who you are?
Pusha T: “Very important. People can see how sturdy you are by your fashion choices, by what trends you’re chasing — and not chasing. Clothes are very important to my profession, too. When I think of hip-hop as a culture, and how I was introduced it, fashion helped me aspire to want certain things, and gave me the drive to get those things. My favorite rapper was someone I wanted to look like, someone I wanted to dress like. Yo! MTV Raps taught me how to dress.”
Blackbird Spyplane: Over the past few years you’ve worn a lot of smaller designers and labels, like Camiel Fortgens, Craig Green, and Martine Rose. It’s sick that you’re on the lookout for people working further below the radar…
Pusha T: “Camiel, Craig, and Martine — you are so spot-on naming them, because the silhouettes those 3 designers bring is always a go-to for me. I see them as elevated performance wear. The functionality of the clothes is always a big deal for me, especially when it comes to the shows, how I’m gonna translate and move onstage.”
Blackbird Spyplane: What are some other independent lines you f--k with, and how do you stay up on them?
Pusha T: “GR10K’s another one. I was introduced to all of them through my stylist, Marcus Paul. We met 15 years ago in Miami in the Delano lobby. We walked past each other and both had on some exclusive BAPE. So we bonded over clothes, and I said, ‘One day maybe we’ll work together.’
“A few years later, I got called to go work on My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. It was in Hawaii, and when I got there I was around Ye, Virgil Abloh, Don C, the whole gamut. I was, like, ‘Oh no, there’s no way I can be here and not be fresher than them.’ So I went back to my guy Marcus and his man Brennan, and I said, ‘I gotta compete.’ Brennan went on to style LeBron, but me and Marcus have been working tight together ever since.”
Blackbird Spyplane: All right, finally, I asked you to tell Spy Nation about a unique cherished possession. What did you choose?
Pusha T: “It’s a framed piece of art — I call it art because my son made it. It’s a piece of paper with ‘I can’t take it’ written in marker.”
Blackbird Spyplane: What’s the context?
Pusha T: “It was him rebelling during home school. I look at it as a sign of, ‘We made it.’ Like, my son is 5, he’s being home-schooled — I wish I was home-schooled — and he’s bitching about it! It’s sitting framed in my kitchen. I’m never getting rid of it.”
Pusha T is on IG here. His 2018 solo album Daytona and Clipse’s 2005 mixtape We Got It 4 Cheap Vol. 2 are especially fantastic. His coffee with Pharrell, Grindin, comes out next month.
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