Key Insights

• Surprise Appearance: Kendrick Lamar surprised fans by joining Clipse on stage in Los Angeles.
• First Performance: The duo performed their collaboration “Chains & Whips” together for the first time.
• Contract Issues: Kendrick’s verse on “Let God Sort Em Out” led to significant issues with Def Jam.
• Label Conflicts: Pusha T discussed the tensions with Def Jam over Lamar’s feature.

Kendrick Lamar made a surprise appearance during Clipse‘s concert in Los Angeles.

The Virginia rap duo brought out the Compton superstar to perform their collaboration “Chains & Whips” together for the first time.

The performance kicked off the concert with the highly acclaimed track first in the setlist before the rap duo performed tracks such as “Ace Trumpets”, “P.O.V.” and their classic hit “Grindin’”.

Kendrick’s verse on Let God Sort Em Out led to issues between Clipse and Def Jam with the duo ultimately forced to buy themselves out of their record contract.

Clipse bring out Kendrick on stage in LA! https://t.co/DcTRUMzmjw pic.twitter.com/vAUns57fth

— ɖɛռռɨֆ (@_CallMeDennis_) August 24, 2025

Sitting down with Billboard, Pusha confessed Def Jam caught him off guard when they asked him to remove the verse: “I was shocked by it actually. I was shocked at first. We haven’t been doing anything particularly. For the past two years, it was just creating the album and back and forth to Paris. It was no ill intent in creating that song. We weren’t on that type of time, so it was totally a shock from what I feel like the optics were enough to put a halt to something like that.”

Speaking to GQ, Pusha T described how their relationship with the storied label crumbled over Lamar’s feature on “Chains & Whips”.

He said: “They wanted me to ask Kendrick to censor his verse, which of course I was never doing. And then they wanted me to take the record off. And so, after a month of not doing it, Steve Gawley, the lawyer over there was like, ‘We’ll just drop the Clipse.’ But that can’t work because I’m still there [solo]. But [if] you let us all go… ”

Pusha also explained how Kendrick’s verse came to be: “Clipse and Kendrick together, that speaks lyricism. I don’t think anyone wants anything other than that. There was a traffic of people coming in and out of the studio and one of the people just happened to be a person from Kendrick’s camp.

“We let his folks hear the album. He called them and was like ‘listen, you need to get on this’. At this particular time, he was super busy. He sent them songs over. He called back laughing like ‘okay, I gotta do it, don’t worry about it, I wanna do two.’ The idea of right place, right time makes everything happen.”