Five years after New Jersey rapper Fetty Wap first uploaded “Trap Queen” to SoundCloud, it remains the biggest hit of his career after peaking at No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100. Prior to its 300 Entertainment re-release in December 2014, the track went through a few changes, one of which involved adding a rap verse that Fetty never wanted to record in the first place.
On the verse, Fetty raps about buying expensive cars and jewelry for his trap queen:
I hit the strip with my trap queen, ‘cause all we know is bands
I just might snatch up a 'Rari and buy my boo a Lamb’
I just might snatch her a necklace, drop a couple on a ring
She ain’t wantin' for nothin' because I got her everything
The initial version of “Trap Queen” was posted in March 2014 as a rough copy—without the rap verse—after Fetty sang the original lyrics off the top of his head. In a 2015 Complex oral history, Fetty explained that he started rapping to the beat at first before switching up his style:
I actually started rapping a verse then I was like, ‘No, I don’t like how that sounds. Stop it. Start the beat over.’ Then I just sang, and I didn’t stop until the beat stopped. Everybody was like, ‘What the fuck just happened?’
After being independently released as a single in April 2014, “Trap Queen” became one of the hottest songs in America. Fetty’s producer and engineer Brian “Peoples” Garcia advised him to record and stash a rap verse for the inevitable remixes.
“I told him that he should do a verse so that he can put out a remix later on,” Garcia explained to Complex. “When I started seeing it catch fire I knew other rappers were going to hop on it. So I felt like we should have a remix already tucked.”
According to Garcia, there was miscommunication with 300 Entertainment about the rap verse, causing it to be included on the re-released “Trap Queen” single:
I think they misunderstood what I said so instead they pushed the version with the verse on it out and used it for the official video. That verse was recorded by somebody else. If you notice, the version on the radio and version in the video sound a little different.
Fetty Wap wasn’t completely happy with the decision, either. “I actually wanted to leave it as it was. It wasn’t my idea,” he told Complex. “They [300] kind of beat it into our head that the earlier version wasn’t going to do it, which was a lie. At the end, people still play the regular version because that’s the best version to me.”
It’s worth noting that Garcia’s intuition about remixes was correct. Gucci Mane and Quavo appeared on the official remix, while Rick Ross, Fabolous, Lil' Kim,French Montana, and Yo Gotti all released their own versions of the song.
“Trap Queen” proved to be resilient, slow-burning hit. It spent 25 consecutive weeks in the Top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100 and peaked at No. 2 on the chart in May 2015, more than a year after first being uploaded to SoundCloud.
Read the full oral history at Complex, and catch up on all the lyrics to Fetty Wap’s “Trap Queen” on Genius now.
