Pusha-T knows that rap is often seen as a young man’s game, but he’s making it clear that he’s absolutely in it for the long haul.
In a new cover story with NME, the It’s Almost Dry rapper reflected on how many aging rappers retired from music early or faded into obscurity. That won’t be happening with King Push, however. “A lot of our forefathers, the greats, they didn’t stand the test of time,” said Pusha. “As great as they were, I don’t know how much they are [still] appreciated. [I want] to show that rap doesn’t have to age out. When people look at me, they need to understand that I can do this forever.”
The majority of rap records that hit No. 1 on the Billboard 200 album chart tend to be from younger artists, mostly in the 20s or 30s. For instance, six other rappers have landed at the No. 1 spot on the chart this year, and only two of them are over 30 (Tyler, the Creator and Future). Pusha, meanwhile, gained his first-ever No. 1 album with It’s Almost Dry earlier this year, at age 44. There aren’t many rappers who can boast about that level of success that late into their careers, with the exception of maybe Jay-Z, whose 2017 album 4:44 peaked at No. 1 when he was 47.
Elsewhere in the chat, he opened up about the differences between him and his close collaborator Kanye West, who produced half of It’s Always Dry.
“Ye and I are very different people,” he says. “The only thing we have in common is our love of street rap. He’s a huge fan and I’m the DNA of that. We’re really parallel on it. I feel like everything else is a debate because we’re just very different people. He’s very emotional and I am way more calculated than him. So, music is never the debate; it’s the strategy that is the debate with us all day long. His superpower is his instinct, so when that’s your superpower, the shit works the majority of the time. My superpower is my calculated, methodical fucking way of going about things, being able to sit back and withstand whatever before I strike.”
Read the full interview here.
