They’re just words, right?

NO matter whether he wants to admit it, Pusha T of the Clipse is doing the rap star thing.

He’s kicking back in the front lounge of the group’s silver tour bus that is driving through Indianapolis en route to a show in Boulder, Colo. He’s half-watching “The Wire,” the cable TV series about Baltimore’s drug trade, and distractedly fielding a reporter’s questions on his cellphone.

The bus that the Clipse have called home for the last week is tidy and well organized. “There’s no such thing as a mess on our tour bus,” Pusha T says.

The Clipse keep it clean and sober in their recording sessions too. “When we’re in the studio, we don’t need a pack of blunts [marijuana joints rolled in cigar paper, which is usually de rigueur in rap sessions], four guns laying on the table, or a bottle of Hennessy,” he says. “It’s totally not that rapper thing.”

Pusha T, 29, says he has never tried cocaine and thinks smoking marijuana is “corny.” He and Malice, his older brother by five years, have never been arrested for any drug-related offenses. And yet, the Clipse have become famous for rapping about drug hustling, a common theme in hip-hop.

On their albums, the brothers nimbly swap verses rife with slang-laden word play about the drug trafficking lifestyle on spartan electro-tracks produced by Pharrell Williams of the Neptunes, who saves his most sinister beats -- the kind with plodding bass drums, cascading robotic sound effects and hollow drum kicks -- for the duo.

In fact, their debut LP “Lord Willin’,” with its witty single “Grindin’,” and its darker sequel “Hell Hath No Fury,” have had music critics calling them the leaders of the so-called “coke rap” resurgence in hip-hop, which includes artists such as Young Jeezy, Lil Wayne and Rick Ross, who also tell explicit drug-dealing stories in their rhymes.

In an essay about cocaine rap in the November 2006 issue of XXL magazine, Kris Ex wrote, “The album that casts the largest shadow over the current landscape is undeniably the Clipse’s 2002 ‘Lord Willin,’ a full length that not only spoke about large scale trafficking with eerie precision, but also sounded like the game -- all peaks and valleys, with paranoid gilds and desolate shines.”

But coke rap is a label that Pusha T finds lacking. “There’s so much more to our lyrics than just coke rap,” he says. “My first commercial success was in ‘02, and just in ’05 or ‘06, the label ‘coke rap’ has come about. So I don’t think it’s fair to just label us as coke rap. There’s literature in our verses. It’s sort of undeniable. Our fans know the level of intelligence. It’s not all just gratuitous.”

Last year’s “Hell Hath No Fury” traverses sophisticated territory rarely covered by other coke rappers. On the mea culpa, “Momma I’m So Sorry,” Malice gets high-brow with, “Now I consider Ferraris and Salvador Dalis / I’m no longer local / My thoughts are global / That’s why I seem distant.” Then on “Hello New World,” he evokes a drug-dealing career gone awry: “Anything that keep momma from crying / Visiting you behind that glass while you await sentencing / ‘cause the judge is saying, ‘Life’ / like it ain’t someone’s life.” Yes, drugs are the theme, but the difference is in the consequences.

Malice and Pusha T were born in the Bronx to Gene and Mildred Thornton, a postman and a mother who had a variety of jobs, including liquor store clerk and pharmaceutical technician.

Malice came first, born Gene Thornton in 1972; then in 1977 Terrence, who would later go by Pusha T, was born.

Two years later, the family moved to Virginia Beach, Va., where Malice eventually earned his name as a local rap star and earned the admiration of Williams during their high school years.

Malice and Pusha T formed a group, originally called Full Eclipse, and were signed to Elektra in 1998 on the strength of their connection to the Neptunes. In 2001, they got another deal with Arista, which eventually dissolved into Jive.

Though “Lord Willin’ ” sold more than a million copies, “Hell Hath No Fury” was mired in label drama for five years until it was finally released in late 2006. The Village Voice quipped that their sophomore album was the “ ‘Chinese Democracy’ of hip-hop.”

Back on the bus, Pusha T is trying to think of his favorite drug anthems. “ ‘Ten Crack Commandments’ was a great record,” he says. “It was very blatant. But you might not call ‘Can I Live’ a drug anthem from Jay-Z because he isn’t saying, ‘Can I live in a pool of powder?’ But in the end of the day, it’s records like that that showcase the allure, the lifestyle. It doesn’t have to be so blatant. On the more blatant tip, I love what Rick Ross did with ‘Hustlin’.”

He’s not so forthcoming when it comes to describing their own real-life exploits to the media. When the reporter asks if they are indeed drug dealers or simply artists that describe the mythology of the culture, he says, “I would never, ever sit in the L.A. Times, myself, raise my hand as if I’m sure, and tell you that I’m a drug dealer,” he says. After a beat, he adds, “That would be preposterous.”

weekend@latimes.com

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Clipse

Where: El Rey Theatre, 5515 Wilshire Blvd., L.A.

When: 8 p.m. Friday

Price: $21.50

Info: (323) 936-6400; www.goldenvoice.com/concerts