“Mona Lisa” is the eighth track from American rapper Lil Wayne and his twelfth album “Tha Carter IV“, which was released in September 2018.
The rap track is the longest on the album, with a total length of 5:24. Lyrically, Lil Wayne and Kendrick Lamar tell a story of a deceptive woman by the name of “Liz”, who sets up her boyfriend for a robbery. Lil Wayne plays the role of the robber, and Lamar the boyfriend. The title of the song is comparing the smile of the infamous painting the “Mona Lisa” (whose smile is deemed to be mysterious and can be viewed as disingenuous) with Liz’s personality being hard to understand. The track dies contain references to Lil Wayne‘s relationship with ex-girlfriend by the name of Karrine Steffans (known as “Superhead”).
The track was produced by OHNEL & Infamous, with Infamous speaking about the beat of “Mona Lisa” to Genius.com and how it evolved throughout the production process:
“The way that the song really started, is we were right in the middle of, towards the end of when Carter V was really supposed to come out [2014] back in the day. Wayne called me, and he was working on a song, and he was like, “Yo, come and get the vocals to this thing that I’m working on. See if you can make a new beat around it.” I went and picked up the vocals. Angel [Aponte], who was working for him at the time, I picked up the files from him and me and Angel went up to my studio after. We made a five-minute beat. It wasn’t anything special or crazy, some of it is still in the final version. We played it for Wayne, and then that turned into the concept of “Mona Lisa.”
He started writing to the beat, and it turned into the story. I heard it and I was like, “Oh, shit, this is crazy.” Then he did a second verse and at the time, his engineer was a dude named Omar Loya. Wayne was talking about trying to get a feature on the song. Everybody was kinda like, “Maybe Nas would be crazy because it’s a storytelling song.” Omar was the one who said, “Kendrick would be cool.” Boom. I know Wayne and Kendrick linked up in the studio, and I wasn’t invited, which bummed me out.
A couple days later, I heard Kendrick’s verse. Wayne played me the whole thing, and it was a whole different ball game. Production-wise, I had to match them. And then that’s where the lawsuit happened. Before we even got a chance to touch the record, everything just got put on pause. Years went by of maybe it’s coming out, maybe it’s not.”
The lyrics to “Mona Lisa” featuring Kendrick Lamar can be accessed here.
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