Thanks to Lil Wayne, There's Only One Way to Complete the Words "Get Money"

Day 317: "Money on My Mind" – Tha Carter II, 2005

Get money. Fuck bitches. Fuck bitches. Get money. If there's a mantra, that is it.

"Money on My Mind" is the platonic ideal of a certain kind of rap song. It is the best Lil Wayne song. Perhaps it's because it was the first song I heard off of Carter II, played on repeat, out loud, in a way that made that hook lodge in my brain forever. Perhaps it's just because that hook is so good that it has taken on a life of its own. If you hear the phrase "get money," you already know what comes next.

Get money. Fuck bitches. "Money on My Mind" wasn't a single for Tha Carter II, although the video was attached to the one for "Hustler Muzik." But it might as well have been. It should have been. At the very least, it hits harder and sounds bigger than "Hustler Muzik." Other than "Fireman," it's the album's most indelible song. (Once again, because how can you forget what comes after "get money"?) When I saw Lil Wayne in 2014, it was the only Carter II cut he played. It still goes.

Get money. Fuck bitches. It defines the Lil Wayne worldview in one short phrase. "New Orleans my birthplace you heard me, where money's more important than the person," he elaborates at one point. "If we talkin' bout money baby now we talkin'" he quips at another. It's in the name: Cash Money Records. Read any interview with Lil Wayne, and money will come up eventually. Women? It's less likely. "Money over bitches, I'm yellin' it to the grave," he says.

Get money. Fuck bitches. There's so much of Wayne's signature cockiness in here: "Dear Mr. Toilet, I'm the shit" is the alpha and the omega of Weezy's scatalogical punchline oeuvre. "In the heart of the summer we need a snow plow" is his breeziest coke rap line. "Too fast for the feds, too cocky for the cops" has you picturing him swerving in Lamborghinis through the streets of New Orleans. And there may be no better opening line in a Lil Wayne song anywhere. "Steppin' out the motherfuckin' car they in awe" will stop you in your tracks. It's so bold. It feels like what it says. It does leave you in awe. You believe every part of it. He looks like a star, bitch. When you see him make a wish.

Get money. Fuck bitches. If these lines sum up Wayne's music—hell, street rap at large—it's fitting. Tha Carter II is Wayne's conquering work, the point at which his hard-won self-assurance tipped over into something bigger. Thanks to "Go DJ," he was already a star, but here his attitude began to build him up as a myth, a mad genius, a swamp monster from Louisiana bearing down on the world of rap at large. It was something different. Yet what made it different was that it was just… better. "Money on My Mind" shouldn't have been groundbreaking.

Get money. Fuck bitches. What worn out, tired ideas. But here, in this booming arena of a beat, they sounded revolutionary. Wayne was doing something different, and he knew it. Every time I hear this song I'm stopped in my tracks and caught up in his excitement as he cackles, "I know it's crazy, but I can't get enough, baby / I love it, I fuckin' love it / I'm a self made millionaire, fuck the public." It's huge. It's raw. It doesn't get any better than that.

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