Pusha-T Is Outdoing Himself: Interview About New Album, Kanye, Pharrell

Pusha-T has put himself amongst good company in his personal ranking, but he says coke rap still gets a bad reputation. “I don’t know when it became cool for people to slight the cornerstone of rap,” he says, dipping one hand out of the water bowl and giving it to the manicurist for clipping. 

“It’s funny, because I come under a lot of scrutiny for the term ‘coke rap’,” he continues. “Either they’re knocking it or they’re finding ways to cheapen it. Like, I drop an album, I go through a cycle and by the time the album cycle is done, then it’s back to, ‘Oh, it’s only this, it’s only that.’ And then I watch the same people who shoot down the genre when I’m at it, they’ll sit back. Then, in my absence, it turns into, ‘Oh man, this is great lyricism.’” 

To Pusha-T, coke rap is a “lazy way of describing” the style, since it’s essentially no different from street rap. For the sake of time, he’ll embrace it, but he says his new album will bring some regality to the name. 

Push has grown accustomed to being called a coke rapper, but he drew the line when Pharrell called him a “mixtape rapper.” The story that Push first shared on Instagram took place shortly after he recorded “Hear Me Clearly.” When Pharrell heard an early cut of the track, he said, “It’s cool, but I don’t want you to be a mixtape rapper for the rest of your life.” Push’s ego was bruised. 

“He was being snide and nasty,” Push says now, scrunching his face up as if he smelled something foul. To some, “mixtape rapper” has a negative connotation, but Pusha has a different opinion. “He knows that my heart is mixtape rap. I only like mixtape verses actually,” he explains. “I’ve known him my whole life, and there was a time in which we both had the same taste in mixtape verses. And that’s a time that I try to get him to revisit a lot, in dealing with me. I particularly believe that our success and our greatness is when we’re in those pockets.”