Check The Credits: Jermaine Dupri

“Money Ain’t A Thang” – Jermaine Dupri feat. JAY Z

One day I called Jay and was like I wanted to do a song, so he came down to Atlanta. I picked him up from the airport and drove him to my house. We didn’t have no drivers back then. [laughs] I was listening to his first album on the way to the airport to pick him up and that’s when I heard the line in “Can’t Knock The Hustle” where he says “deep in the South kickin’ up top game / bouncin’ on the highway switching four lanes / screaming through the sunroof ‘money ain’t a thang’” and I was like “Wait a minute, he said he’s in the South in the song?” I had never paid attention to him saying that until going to pick him up. It seemed so ironic, because he said he’s in the South in the song and he was actually in the South right then. That’s what led to me choosing that line – the fact that he said “in the South.” If he wouldn’t have said that I probably wouldn’t have said “money ain’t a thang” and it’s crazy, because we didn’t even use that line in the song. As soon as he got in the car I played him his own-self and told him I wanted to sample that line. He was like “Nah we ain’t gonna sample it, we gonna say it.” Before he came to the studio I was already making the beat. As soon as he heard that beat his eyes lit up and his rap came to him so fast. I was like “What the fuck?!” He ain’t write no lyrics or nothing. I was like where did these lyrics come from? I was like this nigga must have already had this rap written or something. That was my first time being in the studio with him and witnessing the way he writes. He don’t write no lyrics, so that was the first time I saw that and the last time I wrote on paper as well.”