Few rap duos have ever blended rawness and grace like Clipse. With Pusha T and Malice (or No Malice, depending on the time) at the helm, the Virginia brothers transformed street poetry into fine art — pairing vivid drug metaphors with spiritual tension, luxury name-drops, and philosophical one-liners. From the early days of Lord Willin’ to the cult-classic mixtape runs of We Got It 4 Cheap and their long-awaited return with Let God Sort ’Em Out, Clipse have consistently delivered the kind of bars that command rewind buttons and spark Reddit debates.

Pusha’s quotables often feel like cold-blooded warnings — brief, brutal, and brilliant — while Malice offers a grounded duality, often pairing menace with moral consequence. Together, they embody a high-wire lyrical act: Never over-animated, always in control, and constantly playing chess while others play checkers.

This list pulls from every phase of their career, showcasing a full spectrum of punchlines from iconic singles to hidden gems on mixtapes and comeback tracks. Each bar represents a moment where the pen sliced clean, the imagery stood still, and the listener had no choice but to run it back. Check out some timeless examples of what makes them elite.

1. Ace Trumpets: “Drugs killed my teen spirit, welcome to Nirvana”

Clipse’s return on “Ace Trumpets” was a masterclass in evolution without compromise. Malice dropped one of the duo’s most layered punchlines with this stark callback to Nirvana’s iconic song, referencing both spiritual loss and the reality of what fuels much of Clipse’s past catalog. His verse flipped biblical references and luxury with surgical control, while Pusha T weaved in high-fashion, ballet, and Super Mario coke bars like “White glove service with the brick, I am Luigi.” Paired with Pharrell’s triumphant production, this is legacy rap at its finest — precise, provocative, and utterly self-assured.

2. Virginia: “I tried being humble, humble get no respect, now the first sign of trouble, that’s a hole up in your neck”

Malice laces this menacing couplet with cool detachment, capturing both the frustration and the fatalism that run beneath the surface of Virginia’s streets. It’s one of the song’s most jarring moments, flipping a moral code on its head with surgical precision. Clipse’s “Virginia” isn’t a celebration — it’s a warning, a portrait of a region often overlooked in rap geography but heavy with its own history and rules. The track holds nothing back, and this bar drives the point home: Respect isn’t requested; it’s enforced.

3. Mr. Me Too: “These are the days of our lives and I'm sorry to the fans, but them crackers weren’t playin’ fair at Jive”

Here, Pusha T doesn’t just vent. For the song’s second verse, he memorialized Clipse’s frustrating fight with then-label Jive Records. The soap opera metaphor (“These are the days of our lives”) set the tone, but it’s the second line that hits with seismic force. By calling out the label’s tactics in plain language, Push flipped industry trauma into lyrical weaponry. It’s a moment of fourth-wall-breaking clarity, where rap’s polished veneer gave way to a real-life legal battle. Raw and unfiltered, this bar reminded listeners that even the flyest coke rap can be grounded in hard-won pain.

4. Popular Demand (Popeyes): “Used to have this white b**ch, she looked like Madonna though, heard that she f**king LeBron, but, s**t, I don't know, like that, Bron-Bron? I had that long time ago”

Pusha T never shied away from name-dropping celebrities with surgical precision, and this LeBron James quip is one of his most casually explosive. Delivered with his trademark sneer, the bar referenced an ex-lover who allegedly moved on to a then-rising NBA icon, only for Pusha to dismiss the connection entirely with a cold “I had that long time ago.” Beyond the savage flex, there’s also a loaded cultural moment: Comparing a woman to Madonna, referencing LeBron by nickname (“Bron-Bron”), and wrapping it all in a drug-laced luxury verse full of balconies, Uzi linings and astronomical CLs.

5. Keys Open Doors: “I ain’t spent one rap dollar in three years, holla, money’s the leash, drag the b**ch by a dog collar”

Pusha T was never one to chase a deal when the dope game was already paying in full. With this couplet, he made it painfully clear that his rap career is a side hustle compared to the money moving through the streets. The flex is cold-blooded: Not only is he financially untouched by the music industry’s delays, but he’s also in such control that he likens money to a leash, taming the chaos around him with luxury and discipline. It’s a bar that spoke volumes about Clipse’s real-life industry frustrations with Jive Records while still sounding villainously poised.

6. Emotionless: “Prepare for the worst, that blood’s on Jive’s hands, see when the Fury dropped, so did 80,000 grams, add that to my 80,000 fans”

Pusha T turns bitterness into a lyrical chess move — over a Jim Jones classic, no less — on this deeply introspective Re-Up Gang cut, addressing Hell Hath No Fury’s commercial underperformance and his continued dominance in the streets. With the line, “See when the Fury dropped, so did 80,000 grams,” he simultaneously blamed Jive for industry sabotage while flexing a dual fanbase — the consumers of music and the consumers of coke. In Clipse fashion, the personal and the narcotic collide until they’re indistinguishable.

7. Punch Bowl: “We crossed our fingers before we flushed it, when it ain’t come back, I was disgusted, flip my wig like I was Dudus”

Malice stepped back into the Clipse frame like he never left, delivering one of the coldest reflections of drug-dealing paranoia in recent memory. These bars were haunting in their simplicity: “We crossed our fingers before we flushed it” captured the gambler’s dread of a raid, while “When it ain't come back, I was disgusted” added insult to injury — a product lost, a prayer unanswered. The punchline, “Flip my wig like I was Dudus,” connected the moment to Jamaican drug lord Christopher “Dudus” Coke, turning emotional volatility into a geopolitical reference.

8. Momma I’m So Sorry: “I’m the reason the hood need a dental plan, residue in my hand, I can still feel the gram”

One of the most darkly clever Pusha T lines to ever hit wax, this couplet turned the long-term wear of drug-dealing into something grotesquely poetic. The dental plan bar walked a tightrope between satire and sorrow — a nod to how crack devastated communities both physically and systemically. But it’s the second line that stays with you: “Residue in my hand, I can still feel the gram.” It’s ghostly, tactile, and harrowing, evoking the obsessive imprint of years spent with powder as both currency and curse. If Clipse’s legacy is built on luxury and loss in equal measure, this bar embodies both sides of the scale.

9. Ultimate Flow: “Cruising in that drop, and still, I feel as if I’m nothing more than a hamster in a wheel”

In just a few bars, Malice stripped away the glamour of street success to reveal a deeper existential fatigue. The car was luxurious, the chain was icy, and the view was oceanfront, but fulfillment remained out of reach. “Hamster in a wheel” wasn’t just a metaphor for monotony; it’s a bleak indictment of a life that looked powerful from the outside but felt empty at the core. Unlike his brother’s coke-rap bravado, Malice wielded introspection like a blade, cutting through the illusion of material freedom.

10. Door Man: “My life's too real to be a PSA, the million in the ceiling's for a rainy day”

Malice opened his verse with the kind of raw clarity that made the luxury sound burdensome. “My life’s too real to be a PSA” immediately rejected moral platitudes and signaled that what follows isn’t performative — it’s testimony. The ceiling-stashed million wasn’t just flex; it was a lifeline born of paranoia and survival. Later lines added spiritual dimension (“Praise God, I escaped by His amazing grace”), but it was the tension between faith and fatalism that hits hardest.