Pusha T & Jay Z Paint Triple Beam Dreams On New Song, "Drug Dealers Anonymous"

Jay Z loves the Clipse. That’s just how Pusha T reacted to flaring rumors back in 2009 after a reported Jay Z diss appeared in a line from 2009’s “Thank You.” Since reduced to mere speculation, a lot has happened since the said much-talked about verse. In 2010, Pusha and Jay Z would appear on the same song for the first time ever on Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy cut “So Appalled.” Four years later, P would refer to himself as “The new Hov” on the remix to Rae Sremmurd’s “No Flex Zone,” and in 2015, the pair would join forces for the mini-movie “Darkest Before Dawn,” which was funded by Jay Z. Now, all this history has culminated into the moment we have here: Pusha T featuring Jay Z.

Properly titled “Drug Dealers Anonymous,” the magnitude behind this lineup was enough to draw up a response like this after it was announced earlier. But now that it’s here via Tidal, the face-scrunching remains in order as Hovito and Pyrex P deliver 92 bricks type of talk and triple beam dreams over the DJ Dahi production.

“My brick talk is more than obvious,” advises Push over the eerie, stark melody that is accentuated with clangs. Reminiscing on his seedier days, posted under a lamppost with his hand closed, the hard-nosed spitter sprinkles his verse with double-entendres and signature lyricism from the birds-eye view (double entendre!). “Drug dealers anonymous, how many Madonnas can that Mazda fit? My brick talk is more than obvious, it’s ominous,” he spits, before later adding, “The money count is the only moment of silence / Cause hush money balances all this drugs and violence.”

Later Hov files in references to Federico Fellini, Sergio Tacchini, and Cash Money’s “Bling Bling,” while all the while poking fun at conservative pundit Tomi Lauren and her notorious comments about his past with lines like: “14 year drug dealer and still counting / Who deserves the medal of freedom is my accountant / He been hula hooping through loop holes, working around shit IRS should’ve had the townhouses surrounded.” Overall, Jay goes off about his former days for over two minutes and, whether he does so to point fun at the critics, goes as far as detailing the paper trail. “We got storefronts, we got employee stubs We been opening studios and 40/40s up / The paper trial is gorgeous, cases we buries ‘em / Before Reasonable Doubt dropped, the jury hung,” he continues.

Overall, this is super hero rap music and the tandem of Pusha and Jay Z couldn’t have pitched a better package (get it?) than what we have here: Already, a bar-setting feat for this year’s rap collaborations. Think of The Wire‘s Avon Barksdale and Marlo Stanfield joining forces for business and then play. That’s what “Drug Dealer Anonymous” represents. Two pound-for-pound hustler poster boys, running game about the game. Lyrical exercise at its finest, or as Hov fittingly puts it: “Herein lies the piece of God.”

The song, which serves as the first single from Pusha’s King Push LP, is available now on Tidal.