Lil Wayne’s lyric notebook from the ’90s is now on sale for $5 million after a lengthy legal battle over ownership concluded earlier this year.
The item is up for bids at Moments in Time and was used by a 17-year-old Weezy in the ’90s. Lyrics to tracks such as “Grown Man,” which appeared on Tha Carter II, as well as the Hot Boys’ “We on Fire” and a doodle were some of the things scribbled on the notebook.
Its $5 million USD auction price holds history, however. The notebook was uncovered by an unnamed man in a car that was previously owned by an associate of Wayne’s Cash Money Records. He kept the notebook for safekeeping until 2019 when it was first put up for auction for $250,000 USD. Tunechi himself attempted to legally block the sale, alleging that the notebook was misplaced and accusing the man of hiding the item until he wanted the cash. He also filed a cease and desist against Moments in Time over the sale.
The man legally retaliated with a “finders keepers” argument and asked the court to lawfully name him the rightful owner of the notebook. Wayne never responded, so the court ruled against him.
Last year on The Pivot Podcast, Weezy revealed that he stopped writing down his lyrics after discovering that JAY-Z freestyles without using pen and paper.
“Like Biggie, love Biggie, love Jadakiss — I love all that sh*t, but Jay. The moment I heard it I stopped. You could ask my boy. ‘I heard that n-gga JAY-Z don’t write no more,” Lil Wayne said at the time.
“We went in the studio and we did ‘10,000 Bars’ and that was the last time I rapped anything off of a paper,” the hip-hop star added.