Lil Wayne’s Emmett Till Lyric Was Never Meant to Be Released

The Lil Wayne lyric that angered the family of Emmett Till and fans and subsequently cost the rapper his Mountain Dew endorsement was never meant to be released in the first place. Producer Metro Boomin, the man behind Future and Wayne's 'Karate Chop' remix, in which the controversial lyric is featured, explains that a video hacker leaked the song with that verse without anyone's knowledge.

"We didn’t even intend for it to come out like that. It was serious. I was like, 'Honestly, it will be no good,' so we took the line out," Metro explained to Vibe. "But there was a music video…The whole reason the song came out prematurely is [because] it got leaked."

"I’m not even going to say his name. He had ripped the song off the video director’s…Uh, I guess the video director fell asleep uploading the video, to his Vimeo. He [the ripper] always checks the Vimeo for content and one day he lucked up on the f---ing ‘Karate Chop’ video and he ripped the one with the Wayne verse and he put it out."

The producer insists there was a final version of the song that never included the line about Emmett Till. "On the mastered version, the final, that line wasn’t in there," Metro Boomin adds. "He [the ripper] put it out and made everybody look like douchebags, but it wasn’t the plan."

Weezy's lyrics, “Beat that p---- up like Emmett Till,” caused backlash from the Till estate, who set out to get the song banned. The Young Money leader apologized in a letter to the family but Mountain Dew dropped him as an endorser nonetheless.

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