Pusha T, real name Terrence Thornton, knows exactly where Hell Hath No Fury ranks in his mind. “We had the album of the year,” Pusha says. “It was a landslide. It was too vivid. The realest hip-hop album ever made.”

Coming off the success of their debut studio album Lord Willin’ in 2002, Pusha and his brother Malice (real name Gene Thornton Jr., who changed his name to No Malice in 2012) got tangled up in the politics of the music industry. Arista Records, which released their debut album, dissolved into Jive, and the label prioritized other music acts over them, eventually forcing the duo to request a release from their contract. A lawsuit was filed by the brothers that was eventually settled in 2006. In November of that year, after several mixtape projects in between, Hell Hath No Fury was finally released through the group’s own label Re-Up Records, along with Jive.

Jonathan Mannion

Lord Willin’ established a signature sound for the Clipse. As a whole, it was an unapologetic celebration of drugs and their native Virginia, but it was their partnership with The Neptunes (Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo) that yielded them an all-time hit in "Grindin'," which Pusha affectionately calls a groundbreaking classic lunch-room table track. “We always intended to win by being left of center,” Pusha says. “When we played ‘Grindin'’ for the label heads, they thought we were idiots.” At the time, while artists like Nelly and Ludacris dominated the charts with catchy, sing-song-y hooks, Lord Willin’ was austere, vivid, gristled. The album would make it easy for history to shine a positive light on Clipse as one of the best rap duos to ever do it.

Four years removed from their debut, Hell Hath No Fury pivoted the duo into a much darker space. With The Neptunes once again executive producing the album, their stripped-down production approach on the 48-minute, 12-track record, set the tone for an angrier but also a more introspective look at reconciling the pros and cons of pushing.

“The funny thing about this struggle is that some people have the impression that the lifestyle wasn’t all that was cracked up to be. I tell them, no, it’s everything you imagined it to be.”

When Pusha raps “no serum can cure, all the pain I’ve endured, from crack to rap to back to sellin’ it pure” on the intro of the album, it sets the tone for an airing of grievances throughout the early tracks. The label situation and hiatus in between albums put the duo in a very different headspace. “Angst, anger and ego fueled that album,” Pusha says. “We were egomaniacs. We felt wronged by the music industry.” On “Mr. Me Too,” the group addresses all the imitators who tried to steal the Clipse’s shine during their time away, from rapping to fashion. “Oh man, now y’all are talking about drugs?” Pusha says, laughing. “Like wait a minute. I remember I was being told man you talk too much dope in your record and now everyone’s BAPE from head to toe.”

Despite all the angst, the album does allow for room to celebrate the fame and fortunes that the success of the music afforded them, highlighted by “Wamp Wamp (What It Do),” (“Mirror mirror, who’s the fairest? Tricked a buck fifty on that horse and carriage”) “Ride Around Shinin’,” (“Welcome to the world of Rollies, VS diamonds and that 50,000 dollar show piece”) and “Dirty Money” (“Love you in Escada, Jimmy Choo, Prada, Snow White your life, how’s that for starters?). Tracks like “Hello New World” and “Chinese New Year” represent the quintessential Clipse experience—a banging Neptunes beat, fire verses from Pusha and Malice—but it’s the album’s closer, “Nightmares,” that illuminates the range of emotions that was swallowing them up at the time. The most paranoid track on the album, “Nightmares” deals with themes of fear, guilt, and regret. “They comin’ for me, they runnin’ up, I’m on the balcony, seeing through the eyes of Tony,” Malice rapped. “They say we homies, but I see hatred, do not they know brotherly love is sacred?”

“There were things that touched my soul in such a way, even though I was enjoying the spoils, even though I truly enjoyed the spoils, there were things that didn’t sit right with my soul,” says No Malice, who published a book titled Wretched, Pitiful, Poor, Blind & Naked in 2011, which detailed his personal journey towards converting to Christianity. (Hence the "No.") When No Malice thinks back to 2006, the emotions he felt in trying to untangle his guilt about the lifestyle he was leading bleeds out. “This isn’t on some holy redemption. This is really affecting me personally where no one else would know. Like this doesn’t feel right. Something isn’t right. I couldn’t find fulfillment in the comfort that I wanted.

"Nothing was fabricated... You can fact check everything, and we come up clean."

“I can even say as recent as a month ago, listening to Hell Hath No Fury, there are things that are still being revealed about the mindset and the place I was at the time. I can even see how it has led me to where I am today. I’m speaking for me personally, I didn’t set out for it to be regretful, but I was dealing with regrets, I was dealing with remorse. As far as the celebrating, I think we always found something to be thankful for and knew that things could be worse. There was a lot of pain in dealing with that album.”