Clipse - The Birds Don't Sing

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Speaker 1 Clips was formed in 1994 by two brothers, Gene Thornton Jr., aka Malice, and his younger brother, Terrence Thornton, aka Push-a-Tee.

Speaker 1 From the beginning, they've worked with producer Pharrell Williams, originally as part of the acclaimed production duo, The Neptunes.

Speaker 1 But then, there was a 16-year gap between the third Clips album, which came out in 2009, and their most recent album, Let God Sort Em Out, which came out in July 2025.

Speaker 1 This November, they were nominated for five Grammys, including Album of the Year. They were also nominated for Best Rap Song for The Birds Don't Sing.

Speaker 1 It's a song that they made after the death of both of their parents in the span of just a few months.

Speaker 1 For this episode, I asked Pusha T, Malice, and Pharrell about the making of that song, which also features contributions from John Legend and Stevie Wonder.

Speaker 1 The birds don't sing.

Speaker 1 The birds don't sing, they screech in pain.

Speaker 4 This is Pusha T.

Speaker 4 This is Malice One Half of Clips.

Speaker 1 The events in this song start in November 2021. I was wondering, what was going on in your life around that time? And Pusha, maybe I'll ask you to answer that first.

Speaker 4 I was actually traveling a lot. I was

Speaker 4 making music in different states, different settings. I was always leaving town.

Speaker 4 Me and my mom had got into an argument centered around.

Speaker 4 her driving herself to dialysis and not calling my brother.

Speaker 4 So that was an issue for me. You know, like, why are you driving? Like, you don't even have to drive.
Gene would go to her house in the morning before she could even get to her car.

Speaker 4 He would be outside waiting for her and be like, get in the car. I will drive you to dialysis.

Speaker 4 My mom, real, you know, tough lady.

Speaker 1 tough.

Speaker 4 Like, if you argue with her, it's like she's getting the last words. I think she hung up on me.
When I was coming back home, I said, man, I'm going to go over here and act like nothing ever happened.

Speaker 4 So, of course, I did. Hey, what's up? You look good today.
What's going on? You know, we talking or whatever.

Speaker 4 I told her my plans, which were to go to Turks for Thanksgiving and

Speaker 4 Texas the next day.

Speaker 4 She questioned me about going to Turks.

Speaker 4 Are you sure you want to go to Turks?

Speaker 4 But before I left,

Speaker 4 she said to me,

Speaker 4 Hey, I ain't gonna drive no more, okay?

Speaker 4 And I was like, Okay, you know, I just brushed it off. And then she said, But you know, I can drive, right?

Speaker 4 And I said, Yeah, I know.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 I left, go pack, you know, get myself together, you know, leave

Speaker 1 the airport.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 1 yeah,

Speaker 4 I went to her house, and it was about 5.30 in the morning.

Speaker 4 I was picking her up as normal for a dialysis.

Speaker 4 My sister had called me and she said, you know, she's been trying to call Ma and that she didn't get an answer. And I was like, well, I'm here now.
The door's open. I had just pulled up.

Speaker 4 And I went in there and I just discovered her just

Speaker 4 laying there. When I got to the airport, my wife called me and told me that my brother had found my mom.

Speaker 4 I was on my way back home immediately, of course.

Speaker 4 Four months later, one of my dad's best friends gave me a call and he told me that my dad didn't show up for church. When I went over there to check on my dad, I saw that his car was there.

Speaker 4 You know, I knocked on the door. I just didn't get a a response.
It led me to believe that something, you know, was wrong.

Speaker 4 I called to have a welfare check done.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 the paramedics, when they went inside, it looked to be a new rookie that was with them. And when he came outside, I noticed that he quickly glanced at me but couldn't look at me.

Speaker 4 And I knew at that point, before I actually laid eyes on my dad, I knew that he was no longer with us.

Speaker 4 When I went in his place,

Speaker 4 he was laying there very much like how my mom was laying there.

Speaker 4 It was just very surreal to revisit that scenario back to back

Speaker 4 like that.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Your parents lived in Virginia Beach, and I know that's where you grew up, and that's where Pharrell grew up. Did he know your parents? Absolutely.

Speaker 4 Pharrell, I mean, we know each other's parents and neighbors, and yeah, for sure.

Speaker 1 I'll never forget, like, I was at my house, like, sort of pacing around in the yard, and I just understood that we got to do a song, it was the right thing to do. We got to do this.

Speaker 4 It came to him, and he was like, Man, I got to go in the studio tomorrow because I feel like I got this. Like, I feel like I got the song.
He hears it in his head before anything.

Speaker 4 I was in Paris where we had been recording the majority of the album. I just remember he played the beat.

Speaker 4 You know, and just telling me, like, this is how it's supposed to be. Like, this is the openness and this is the sound bed to get everything you want to get off your chest.

Speaker 4 That was his pitch to me for the verses.

Speaker 4 Because when you have beats like that, every line has to hit. Every line had to mean something.

Speaker 4 The beat was what we call a talker,

Speaker 4 where you can get your diction on and say the things that touch people and make them feel where you're coming from.

Speaker 4 I couldn't dive into it though. I needed a minute.

Speaker 4 I did feel like we have to do this, but I just wasn't ready to prepare myself for that dive in, honestly.

Speaker 5 Lost in emotion, mama's youngest. Trying to navigate life without my compass.
Some experience death and feel numbness, but not me. I felt it all and couldn't function.

Speaker 4 Immediately, it was about tapping into the emotion. Just the emotion of even having to write it.
I wanted to speak to that from line one.

Speaker 4 You know, you need to understand that I'm lost while I'm trying to write this. I'm trying to figure this out, y'all.
And I wanted to put in perspective where I am in the family tree.

Speaker 4 You know, just imagine what the youngest, the mama's boy

Speaker 4 of the bunch, how tough this has to be.

Speaker 5 Seeing you that day, telling you my plans, but I was leaving you that day. It was in God's hands.
Yay, was it Elon's waiting to get with me? On my way to Texas, that's when Virginia hit me.

Speaker 4 To give a little bit of backstory,

Speaker 4 that day I was meeting Kanye at Elon Musk's house to record, to be honest. So I was actually on a trip to Texas when I found out, and my wife's name is Virginia.

Speaker 1 When you have a moment like that, lyrically, where you're in the middle of this emotional story, but you still manage to juxtapose Texas, the place, and Virginia, the place, with Virginia, your wife's name.

Speaker 1 Is that something that comes to you spontaneously, or is it something that you try and work towards?

Speaker 4 No.

Speaker 4 I feel like you're trying to get our original recipe on how we do this thing here.

Speaker 1 I am, exactly.

Speaker 4 This song was definitely more on the passionate side, but there are just those magical times that come together where it just ended up being wordplay when it's really just true.

Speaker 5 Saying you was tired, but not ready to go. Basically, was dying without letting me know.
I love you, Matt Naj. Hate that he won't remember you.
Two things that break my heart is what Novembers do.

Speaker 1 Could you tell me about that lyric? Two things that break my heart is what Novembers do.

Speaker 4 Genius. For my son not to know who his grandmother was

Speaker 4 and how she was.

Speaker 4 That

Speaker 4 is very painful to me because she was a nurturing, spoiling type of lady and would be for him. I think that like is

Speaker 4 a very tough thing for me in dealing with you know her loss.

Speaker 1 Gene, you said genius when I asked about that line from Push A T.

Speaker 1 Do you two feel like you are each other's first fans?

Speaker 4 Oh, for sure. For me, for me, absolutely.
I mean, we had a session. I had to take him outside and just tell him what I thought.
And I was like, yo, you know, you're the best.

Speaker 4 You are the best. That's how I see it.
You got to understand that, you know, for me,

Speaker 4 the art of rap, I've never witnessed.

Speaker 4 this in close proximity until my you know seeing my brother first being a writer understanding the art of it, the actual, you know, sitting down pen to pad notebook.

Speaker 4 So there's a tutorial in that in just the beginning of it for me. And now 16 years later from our last album, seeing how people gravitate to his intellect and perspective, man, this has been going on.

Speaker 4 from seventh grade for him, 12, 13 years old for him.

Speaker 1 So, of course how does this first end

Speaker 4 t follows you which is my dad now mind you did

Speaker 4 calls you gene finds you was that your vision precision while i'm reminiscing it all his different mom listen

Speaker 4 that was basically the walkdown of everything that happened when gene tells you he pulled up at my mom's house my sister called him he was already in front of the house he walks in the door was open.

Speaker 4 Was this how she played it, wanted it, and how it was just easy? Like it was just, yeah, she just made it clean, man. But that's my mom.

Speaker 4 I don't know. It just made me question.
Like I said, the whole verse, as I'm writing it, my mind is just thinking in hindsight.

Speaker 4 Just wanted to speak to the idea of, man, did you map this out like this?

Speaker 1 My conversation with Clips continues after this.

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Speaker 4 Pusha finished his verse before I did. And when I first heard his verse, it just cut really, really deep.

Speaker 4 I knew that I had a job on my hands. And then, once I had some time to just enjoy the verse and lament over the verse, mourn over the verse, then and only then could I dig in and do my thing on it.

Speaker 5 Your car was in the driveway. I knew you were home.
By the third knock, a chill ran through my bones. The way you missed mama, I guess I should have known.

Speaker 5 Chivalry ain't dead, you ain't let her go alone.

Speaker 4 And that is who my dad was. Chivalrous.
You know what I'm saying? Stand up when a woman comes into the room.

Speaker 5 Combing through your dresser drawer, where do I begin? Posting noted Bible quotes, were you preparing in?

Speaker 4 Everywhere, scriptures, everywhere. Like, I don't know how many Bibles he had in his house, but he was the deacon at his church.

Speaker 4 You know, even in his car, like, you pull the visor down and a scripture falls out of it. You know what I'm saying?

Speaker 4 And that was our conversation every morning, coffee, and just talking about the goodness of God.

Speaker 4 That's really how we bonded.

Speaker 5 I can hear your voice now. I can feel your presence.
Asking, shit, I rap again. You gave me your blessing.
The way you spelled it out, there's an L in every lesson. Boy, you owe it to the world.

Speaker 5 Let your mess become your message.

Speaker 4 So I asked him the week before he passed, what did he think

Speaker 4 about me returning to rap? And he said, I think you've been too hard on yourself, son, just like that. I really stand by every decision I made with my hiatus.

Speaker 4 But to hear him say that, you know, it just opened my eyes.

Speaker 4 Pharrell has said he didn't want to sing the hook. He didn't felt like he was strong enough a singer to do the hook.

Speaker 4 He sang it a couple different

Speaker 4 ways and ended up saying, man, I'm not nailing this chorus properly,

Speaker 4 but this is how I hear it. And when we get the right person to nail it, it's going to be everything it needs to be.

Speaker 4 And then

Speaker 4 he was like, hey, man. You know who'll do this.
Like, who got it? They're going to execute. And I was like, who? He was like, john legend and i was like man

Speaker 3 the birds don't sing the birds don't sing their screeching pain

Speaker 4 he understood the mission yeah he definitely understood the mission i could tell he understood what the song meant to us you know you could hear it in the vocal

Speaker 1 Pharrell, Pusha and Malice told me that you were the one who came up with the lyrics for the hook. And I was wondering, how did those words end up being the lyrics for the song?

Speaker 1 It's a quote from Werner Herzog, right? Yeah. The director.

Speaker 4 It just, it was so striking to me. It was from this movie.

Speaker 1 He was like in the jungle somewhere, and you know, something went terribly wrong with his production, whatever. He was just so mad, he was kind of like cursing everything.

Speaker 6 Of course, there's a lot of misery, but it is the same misery that that is all around us.

Speaker 6 The trees here are in misery, and

Speaker 6 the birds are in misery. I don't think they sing, they just screech in pain.

Speaker 1 And I was like, that's crazy.

Speaker 4 The audacity to say that you're sad, so certainly everything must be sad too.

Speaker 4 And so when we got ready to do the song, I knew that was the title.

Speaker 4 The birds don't sing, they screech in pain.

Speaker 4 Don't the truth go in there?

Speaker 4 Since the beginning of time when it was Neptune's, we used to call Pharrell the third eclipse member.

Speaker 4 You know, just because of the ad-libs and those vocal nuances that come along within the track, it's something that people have always

Speaker 4 looked forward to.

Speaker 4 And Stevie Wonder did the keys.

Speaker 1 How did that happen?

Speaker 4 Pharrell took a trip somewhere and Stevie Wonder was there. And he was like, Man, I have this song that I would love to get you on.
He gave him the whole rundown of the song.

Speaker 4 And man, you know, Stevie just enhanced what was there.

Speaker 4 And that's Stevie at the end of the song as well, speaking.

Speaker 1 Remember those who lost their mothers and fathers.

Speaker 7 And make sure that every single moment that you have with them,

Speaker 7 you show them

Speaker 3 love.

Speaker 4 Man, if my mom knew that we had Stevie Wonder on the song, she'd flip out.

Speaker 7 You show them love, you'll see.

Speaker 1 One thing I'm curious about is how did you two decide who was going to write which verse about which parent?

Speaker 4 I mean, we both could have interchanged.

Speaker 4 It was just how it happened. Pusha finished his verse with the conversation, you know, that he had had with our mother at the time, just fresh on his mind.

Speaker 4 But I mean, we could have switched at any point.

Speaker 1 I just want to go back to the lyrics for the hook for a second. When you first heard Pharrell building this hook around these words, the birds don't sing, they screech in pain.

Speaker 1 What was your reaction to that?

Speaker 4 It hit me pretty hard

Speaker 4 because

Speaker 4 I was feeling like, damn, like my mom was really toughing this out. You know, the whole process of dialysis, the whole process of, you know, just sickness and.

Speaker 4 getting up and doing all that she was doing. And I began to just think about how tough things had to have been for her.

Speaker 4 And speaking about that with Pharrell, just randomly, you know, just like, man, you know, how you feeling? And, you know, just telling him about that. He called me back and was like, man,

Speaker 4 the parallel of

Speaker 4 we think that birds are singing, but they're actually.

Speaker 4 screeching in pain like the parallel of like you know watching my mom just get up and muster through things and she here and she tough and whatever the case may be but she may have really been toughing it out i think a lot of people suffer in silence and especially the way we grew up it's like you just don't dump all of your hardships your pain and struggles are no more special than anyone else's

Speaker 4 but the idea of anything being tough for her

Speaker 4 while I'm thinking she's just going on with her day and her daily and, you know, just being her. That idea was,

Speaker 4 that broke me down. Like, it broke me down.

Speaker 4 So on

Speaker 4 Thursday,

Speaker 4 my dad came over to get some paperwork that I had.

Speaker 4 So he pulls up in the driveway.

Speaker 4 He's sitting in the car and I ran outside and I had on a white t-shirt, I remember, and it was freezing outside. I came outside.
I went to his side of the door. I gave him the paperwork.

Speaker 4 I ran back up the stairs to my house and I said, I love you.

Speaker 4 And he said, I love you, son. And it was that tone that I just did.
Now, we always said that I love you, but the way he said it,

Speaker 4 it rang to me like it touched me because it was very endearing. And then I'm running in the house and I close the door and I'm running up my stairs.

Speaker 4 I said to myself, I said, I didn't even see his face. Like I didn't bend down to look in the car.
I just gave him the paper.

Speaker 4 And my dad passed that weekend.

Speaker 4 That's the last thing that I heard him say.

Speaker 4 It really meant something to me. He left me with something.

Speaker 4 Family is family.

Speaker 1 And now, here's The Birds Don't Sing by Clips in its entirety.

Speaker 5 Lost in emotion, mama's youngest. Trying to navigate life without my compass.
Some experience death and feel numbness. But not me, I felt it all and couldn't function.

Speaker 5 Seeing you that day, telling you my plans, but I was leaving you that day. It was in God's hands.
Yeah, it was at Elon's waiting to get with me. On my way to Texas, that's when Virginia hit me.

Speaker 5 And I realized in that instant, our last conversation, you was against it. Told you I was going to Turks for Thanksgiving.
I heard what I wanted to hear, but didn't listen.

Speaker 5 You said you told Gene that Buck needed forgiveness. I see you went to Didi's and stuffed both her fridges.
You even told dad you wished y'all never splitted.

Speaker 5 See, you were checking boxes, I was checking my mentions. Saying you was tired but not ready to go.

Speaker 5 Basically, was dying without letting me know. I love you, Matt Naj.
Hate that he won't remember you. Two things that break my heart is what Novembers do.
And T follows you.

Speaker 5 Now mind you, Didi calls you. Gene finds you.
Was that your vision?

Speaker 4 Precision.

Speaker 5 While I'm reminiscing, it all hits different miles.

Speaker 2 The birds don't sing

Speaker 2 The birds don't sing their screeching

Speaker 8 The birds don't sing

Speaker 8 The birds don't sing they screech

Speaker 5 Your car was in the driveway, I knew you were home By the third knock, a chill ran through my bones The way you missed mama, I guess I should have known Chivalry ain't dead, you ain't let her go alone Found you in the kitchen, scriptures in the den Half-written text that you never got to send Combing through your dresser drawer, where do I begin?

Speaker 5 Posting noted Bible quotes, were you preparing then? I can hear your voice now, I can feel your presence. Asking, should I rap again?

Speaker 5 You gave me your blessing The way you spelled it out, there's an L in every lesson Boy, you owe it to the world, let your mess become your message Shared you with my friends, the pops they never had You lived for our fishing trips, damn, I had a dad Mind taught discipline, mind taught structure Mind didn't mind when he had to pull a double Mind worked overtime, smiled through the struggle Cause mine wouldn't let us feel what he had to suffer See mine made sure he had every base covered So imagine his pain finding base in the cupboard Birds don't sing if the words don't sting.

Speaker 5 Your last few words in my ears still ring. You told me that you love me, it was all in your tone.
I love my two sons with the code to your phone. Now you home.

Speaker 5 The birds don't sing, they scream.

Speaker 2 When they look,

Speaker 2 they just red pain.

Speaker 2 that shit over and over again.

Speaker 8 The birds don't sing.

Speaker 8 The birds don't sing, they screech and pain.

Speaker 8 The birds don't sing.

Speaker 8 The birds don't sing, they screech and pain.

Speaker 8 You'll love the mind.

Speaker 3 Remember those

Speaker 1 who lost their mothers and fathers

Speaker 7 and make sure that every single moment that you have with them

Speaker 7 you show them

Speaker 3 love.

Speaker 7 You show them love.

Speaker 8 You'll see.

Speaker 1 Visit songexploder.net slash clips to learn more. You'll find links to buy and stream the birds don't sing.
And you can watch the music video.

Speaker 1 This episode was produced by me, Craig Ely, Mary Dolan, and Kathleen Smith, with production assistance from Tiger Bisco.

Speaker 1 The episode artwork is by Carlos Lerma, and I made the show's theme music and logo. Special thanks to Rob Alsch for recording Clips' side of our conversation.

Speaker 1 Song Exploder is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a network of independent, listener-supported, artist-owned podcasts. You can learn more about our shows at radiotopia.fm.

Speaker 1 I write a newsletter where I talk about the making of some of these episodes and about music and film and generally about the creative process.

Speaker 1 You can find a link to the newsletter on the Song Exploder website. You can also get a Song Exploder shirt at songexploder.net slash shirt.

Speaker 1 I'm Rishikesh Hiroi. Thanks for listening.

Speaker 1 Radiotokia

Speaker 1 from PRX.

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