It’s been four years since the last time we heard Lil Wayne and Kendrick Lamar collaborate on Mike WiLL Made-It’s “Buy The World,” but today the pair reunited on Wayne’s long-awaited album Tha Carter V. The project’s eighth track “Mona Lisa,” produced by Onhel and Infamous, features the two MCs spinning tales of deceptive women in their lives. They draw comparisons to Leonardo DaVinci’s famous painting Mona Lisa, which sports an ambiguous smile that they imply is hiding secrets.
Wayne kicks off the song by introducing a woman who sets rappers up to be robbed:
I see niggas in this bitch, stuntin', popping bottles
Getting drunk with these bitches and when they leave, they get followed
Fall asleep with that bitch and really don’t know much about her
Then she let us in, we take all of your shit
And when you wake up, she help you try to find it, I love it
Later on, he reveals his own role in the deception:
She pour you a drink, that drink on me, nigga
She slip something in it, now thank for me, nigga
Mona Lisa, I done painted the picture
Mo-mona Lisa, out the frame on these niggas
His story draws comparisons to Nas‘ 1996 track “The Set Up” or The Notorious B.I.G.’s 1997 song “I Got A Story to Tell,” both of which concern women luring rappers into bad situations.
Kendrick’s verse doesn’t continue the robbery narrative, instead addressing a woman Kendrick doesn’t trust in a relationship. It seems likely that the verse was recorded several years ago, considering he references the “Black Mamba” nickname for Lakers player Kobe Bryant, who retired in 2016:
Chilling with the Laker, on the floor, fourth quarter, fourth minute on the clock, Black Mamba with the ball
Paparazzi looking at them both popping up and take a picture, uh
Probably on a Internet blog
Kendrick’s verse also features a sample of Wayne’s 2008 hit “Lollipop” as part of the narrative, as Kendrick finds out his girl is messing around with Lil Wayne:
…lick me like a lollipop
He on your fucking ringtone?
Is that the shit that you do?
If “Mona Lisa” sounds familiar to fans, it may be because now-jailed pharma bro Martin Shrkeli shared a snippet of the the song on Periscope back in 2017. The controversial former pharmaceutical executive purchased a copy of Tha Carter V after Wayne allegedly left it in a Bugatti Veyron that he traded in.
“Mona Lisa” has earned over 151,000 pageviews on Genius in the hours since Tha Carter V’s release, and reached No. 1 on Genius' Top Songs chart today.
Listen to the song above and read all the lyrics to Lil Wayne’s “Mona Lisa” featuring Kendrick Lamar on Genius now.
