Clipse Pay Tribute to Parents With Moving ‘The Birds Don’t Sing’ Performance on ‘Tonight Show’
The track is the first song on the duo's recently released "Let God Sort Em Out" album.
Pusha T and No Malice of Clipse perform during Roots Picnic 2025 at The Mann at Fairmount Park on June 1, 2025 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Clipse are known for fiery, hard-hitting verses that that pull no punches. But during their performance of “The Birds Don’t Sing” on The Tonight Show on Tuesday night (July 15) brothers Pusha T and Malice proved that having a soft side doesn’t make you soft with a touching tribute to their parents.
Promoting their first new album in 16 years, Let God Sort Em Out, the siblings set aside their signature razor-sharp coke rap bars and boundless braggadocio to focus on family in a bare-bones appearance that opened with Pusha lovingly remembering the pair’s mother. “Lost in emotion, mama’s youngest/ Tryna navigate life without my compass/ Some experience death and feel numbness/ But not me, I felt it all and couldn’t function,” he rapped. “Seein’ you that day/ Tellin’ you my plans but I was leavin’ you that day It was in God’s hands, Ye was at Elon’s waiting to get with me.”
With the two massive screens behind them filled with images of their late mother, Mildred Thornton, over the song’s spare piano bounce, Pusha lamented all the things she’s going to miss as a female vocalist crooned John Legend’s chorus from the album, emoting, “The birds don’t sing, they screech in pain.”
No Malice was up next, tipping his hat to their dad, Gene Elliott Thornton Sr., who died just months after their mother in 2021. “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’ve known,” he rapped over pictures of their dad at the grill and smiling with their mom as he recalled the lessons he learned and the love that he’ll keep in his heart forever. “Your last few words in my ear still ring/ You told me that you loved me, it was all in your tone/ ‘I love my two sons’ was the code to your phone, now you’re gone.”
Let God Sort Em Out is the long-awaited follow-up to 2009’s Til the Casket Drops and once again features the brothers working with longtime collaborator Pharrell Williams, as well as teaming up with Kendrick Lamar, Tyler, the Creator, Nas, The-Dream and Ab-Liva.
Watch Clipse perform “The Birds Don’t Sing” on The Tonight Show below.
