Pusha T Edges Out Lil Wayne in First-Week Sales With New Clipse Album Let God Sort Em Out

Pusha T has notched a notable victory in his long-standing rivalry with Lil Wayne, thanks to the strong debut of the Clipse reunion album Let God Sort Em Out. The project, which reunites Pusha with his brother Malice, entered the Billboard 200 at No. 4, moving an impressive 118,000 equivalent album units in its first week.

While Let God Sort Em Out didn’t top the chart, it managed to outperform Lil Wayne’s recent release Tha Carter VI, which debuted at No. 2 just last month with 108,000 units sold. That number, though respectable, falls short of the high standards set by Wayne’s previous projects, especially compared to 2018’s Tha Carter V, which opened with nearly 500,000 units, and 2008’s Tha Carter III, which moved over a million in its first week.

Despite Clipse’s reputation for more niche, lyrically dense music, the duo’s commercial performance is a clear sign that fans were eager for their return. It’s a small but meaningful win for Pusha T in the ongoing tension between him and Lil Wayne—a rivalry that dates back over a decade.

However, Pusha didn’t walk away with the week’s biggest release. That honor went to Travis Scott and his Cactus Jack collective, whose compilation album Jackboys 2 debuted at No. 1 with a staggering 232,000 equivalent units—despite having a shorter sales week than most of its competition. The album outperformed not only Clipse and Wayne’s projects, but also surprise new releases from Justin Bieber (SWAG) and others.

The chart battle came amid a flurry of tension between Pusha T and Travis Scott as well. On the Clipse single “So Be It,” Pusha unleashed a scathing verse directed at Scott, rapping:
“You cried in front of me, you died in front of me / Calabasas took your bitch and your pride in front of me / Her utopia had moved right up the street / And her lip gloss was poppin’, she ain’t need you to eat.”

In a follow-up interview with GQ, Pusha explained the backstory behind the diss. He claimed that Travis showed up uninvited at a Pharrell studio session in Paris, where Pusha and Malice were working. Scott played them a track from his album, but conveniently left out the now-infamous Drake verse on “Meltdown,” which takes shots at Pharrell—Pusha’s longtime friend and collaborator.

“The true context of that is we were in Paris, literally working, and he was calling to play P his new album,” Pusha explained. “He came to [Pharrell’s] studio. He interrupted a session. He sees me and Malice there. He’s like, ‘Oh, man, everybody’s here,’ he’s smiling, laughing, jumping around, doing his f***ing monkey dance. We weren’t into the music, but he wanted to play it, wanted to film [us and Pharrell listening to it]. And then a week later you hear ‘Meltdown,’ which he didn’t play.”

As always in hip-hop, the numbers tell one story, and the personal dynamics another. But in this case, Pusha T walks away with a satisfying commercial achievement that underscores the continued relevance of Clipse—and puts a spotlight on the simmering rivalries that continue to shape the culture.