The Kendrick Lamar featured "Mona Lisa" is one of the standouts on Lil Wayne's new album Carter V.
It was produced by Infamous, who has five productions credits on the much-delayed project.
Infamous told DJ Booth that he began working on "Mona Lisa" in 2014, and Kendrick added his verse not long after they started.
“[Wayne] started writing to the beat, and it turned into the story,” Infamous recalls. “I heard it and I was like, ‘Oh, shit, this is crazy.’ Then he did a second verse and at the time, his engineer was a dude named Omar Loya. Wayne was talking about trying to get a feature on the song. Everybody was kinda like, ‘Maybe Nas would be crazy because it’s a storytelling song.’ Omar was the one who said, ‘Kendrick would be cool.’”
Then the track sat for four years as Carter V got hung up in legal purgatory.
Infamous explained that he had begun to consider leaking the song as the years went on without movement on C5
"I think I was starting to give up a little bit," he explained. "A song like this—I’m gonna keep it real with you—if it wouldn’t have come out this year or even next year, I probably would have leaked it myself. I think that song is too crazy for it to just live on a laptop. I felt the world of hip-hop needed to hear this song. So no matter what, I would’ve leaked it at some point."
Was it worth the wait?