Few posse cuts have had more star power than Drake, Kanye West, Lil Wayne, and Eminem’s “Forever”. Few have a story of such intense competition between the rappers.
Eminem’s verse on “Forever” made Kanye West withdraw a submitted verse and write a new one. Apparently, Lil Wayne did the same.
The topic came up during Wayne’s appearance on The Bayou With Tyrann Mathieu podcast. A host brought up “Forever”, and Lil Wayne described the song’s lineup as the Mount Rushmore. That is more than a figure of speech: his Top 5 rappers include Eminem, himself, and Drake. So, for him to rap in this company was a challenge that he accepted with enthusiasm.
And when the host asked was true that Weezy had to rework his original verse after hearing Em’s contribution, Lil Wayne did not deny it:
That was a motivation. I got hyped. Em’s verse was a drug or something. My original verse that I had on there – I’m sure there wasn’t a damn thing wrong with it. But I think I was not going hard on them. I was talking about general topics. I was not talking about knocking your fucking head off, and I’m the best out here. And once I heard Em’s verse, I was like, “Jesus Christ, what’s this dude? What is wrong with this white boy, man? He makes it so fucking difficult”. Alright, I take my verse off, give me a minute, I gotta redo my verse. But I enjoyed every second of that whole moment. Just knowing that “Ooh, I can’t wait to do a new version. I hope he loves it”.
However, there is a serious difference between Kanye rewriting his verse and Wayne reworking his original lyrics. Weezy wrote it a year before the song was revived for this celebrity treatment with an aim of appearing on the LeBron James’ documentary soundtrack. Originally, it was a Kardinal Offishall song that ended up being resold to Drake. Then Drake’s version with Lil Wayne and Kidd Kidd, titled “I Want This Forever”, leaked. So, everyone who heard that version knew that Wayne’s verse from the official “Forever” release was drastically different. So was Drake’s, for what it’s worth. Only the chorus has survived all the changes.
So, this is a story about Lil Wayne finding himself in a new situation: on a track with a lyrical assassin, he realised that his old lyrics needed updating. And update them he did.