Archive · Re-Up Gang
We Got It 4 Cheap, Vol. 2
By Diony C.
•June 25, 2026
•6 min read
Clipse were sitting on Hell Hath No Fury with no release date. Pusha T and Malice moved into Pharrell's mansion and made the tape that changed everything. Now streaming in the archive.
Jive wouldn’t drop Hell Hath No Fury. So Pusha T and Malice moved into Pharrell’s mansion and made the tape that changed everything.
Jive Records had Hell Hath No Fury sitting on a shelf.
Clipse had turned in the album. The label had it. They just would not release it, not until Pusha T and Malice recorded something radio-friendly, something that could move units in a format the label understood. That hit never came because Clipse were not built to make that kind of record. So they did what any artist does when the system stops working for them. They went around it.
Pusha T called DJ Clinton Sparks. They moved into the guest rooms at Pharrell’s mansion. And over the course of that stay, they made We Got It 4 Cheap Vol. 2, eighteen tracks of borrowed instrumentals, Re-Up Gang features, and the sharpest writing either brother had ever put to tape. They gave it away for free because the label had left them no other choice.
Pitchfork gave it an 8.8 and called it “the best example of what a mixtape can be.” It is still considered one of the greatest mixtapes of all time.
Stream the full tape in the player above.
The Artists
Featured Artists
From the Catalog
The We Got It 4 Cheap series was the bridge between Lord Willin’ and Hell Hath No Fury. These are the Clipse titles in the shop.
2xLP · Gold Vinyl
Hell Hath No Fury
The album Jive delayed for years. Released November 2006. All Neptunes production. Pitchfork 9.5. This pressing is on Gold Vinyl.
Shop Hell Hath No Fury 2xLP
LP · Colored Vinyl
Let God Sort Em Out
The 2025 reunion album. Recorded at Louis Vuitton headquarters in Paris with Pharrell. The first Clipse album in sixteen years.
Shop Let God Sort Em Out LP
CD · 2025 Reunion
Let God Sort Em Out
The CD edition of the reunion album for those who want the full package.
Shop Let God Sort Em Out CDThe Label Limbo That Made It Possible
Clipse had been through this before. Jive shelved their debut album Exclusive Audio Footage in the late 1990s. When Lord Willin’ finally dropped in 2002 it hit number four on the Billboard 200 and number one on the Top R&B and Hip-Hop Albums chart. “Grindin’” became one of the defining records of that year. The Neptunes production and Pusha’s pen made them undeniable.
Then the label slowed everything down again. Hell Hath No Fury sat in limbo for years. The demand was there. The album was done. Jive simply would not move without a crossover record that Clipse had no interest in making.
The first We Got It 4 Cheap arrived in 2004. It introduced Ab-Liva and Sandman, the other two members of the Re-Up Gang, and gave Clipse a direct line to their audience that bypassed the label completely. Vol. 2 took everything the first tape established and pushed it into a different category entirely.
Pharrell’s Mansion, Borrowed Beats, No Filler
The approach on Vol. 2 was precise. Clipse and Clinton Sparks deliberately avoided Neptunes production. Everyone already knew what Pusha and Malice sounded like over those beats. Instead they pulled some of the hardest instrumentals from 2005: the Game’s “Hate It or Love It,” Common’s “The Corner,” Cassidy’s “I’m A Hustla,” Amerie’s “1 Thing,” Juelz Santana’s “Mic Check.” Beats that deserved sharper pens than the original songs had given them.
Pharrell appeared throughout but always as a collaborator, not as a producer reclaiming familiar territory. “What’s Up,” “Hate It or Love It,” “Play Your Part,” every track with him felt like a natural extension of the Re-Up Gang’s chemistry rather than a feature inserted for name value.
The result was eighteen tracks with no wasted motion. All four Re-Up Gang members present on every record. The kind of focus that most albums never achieve. The whole tape moving like a debut album that the label had no hand in.
The Knitting Factory Show
When Clipse came to New York to perform behind the tape, they did not know what to expect. They had not broken New York. The city had never fully embraced them. They booked the Knitting Factory and waited.
Every music critic and blogger in New York packed the room past capacity. When they stepped on stage and started performing the mixtape tracks, the entire audience rapped every word back at them. Pusha stood at the edge of the stage pointing out individual people in the crowd who knew every line.
That night Clipse found out they had a new audience they did not know existed. The internet had moved the tape across the country through word of mouth, blog by blog, mixtape site by mixtape site. The streets already knew.
After the show, Malice stood on the sidewalk outside the Knitting Factory handing out copies of Vol. 2 to people leaving the venue. That is who they were.
What Came After
Jive finally released Hell Hath No Fury in November 2006. The album was exactly what Pusha and Malice had been sitting on. Eleven tracks, all Neptunes production, no concessions to radio. It made every major year-end list. Pitchfork gave it a 9.5. The tape had been the proof of concept. The album was the payoff.
Vol. 3 arrived in 2008, hosted this time by DJ Drama, with Re-Up Gang billed as the lead artists. Then the group went quiet for years.
The reunion came in 2025. Let God Sort Em Out recorded at Pharrell’s new workplace, the Louis Vuitton headquarters in Paris. The same creative dynamic as the mansion sessions twenty years earlier, just with a different address. The album arrived with the same surgical precision that made Vol. 2 what it was.
The tape was the beginning of that whole arc. Jive tried to hold them. They built their own stage instead.
The payoff. “Mr. Me Too” was the lead single from Hell Hath No Fury in 2006, the album Jive finally released after We Got It 4 Cheap Vol. 2 made the case for it. Pharrell on the hook, the same chemistry that built the tape in his guest rooms.