Lil Wayne’s reference to Emmitt Till on Future’s “Karate Chop” subsequently got him dropped from his Mountain Dew endorsement…but it was actually never supposed to see the light of day. Now, that doesn’t make what he said any better, but at least it shows that the people around him and Future DID have the smarts to say “no” to something that was questionable. Find out who it ended up getting out via the song’s producer Metro Boomin’s interview with VIBE.
You produced Future’s “Karate Chop” on which Wayne rapped about Emmett Till and subsequently got his Mountain Dew endorsement revoked. What happened?
I just heard about that like two days ago. One of my home boys had pulled it out, like “Man. Wayne lost his Mountain Dew endorsement because of you.” I was like “Don’t blame that on me! I ain’t tell that man what to say.”Were you in the studio with Weezy when he laid his verse or did he send it to you remotely?
Nah. He sent it. We were in Atlanta and he sent it. Future had called me to come listen to the verse at 11th Street Studios. That’s where I heard the verse.The question that everyone has is how did an entire studio of people think the verse was okay? Did you have hesitations putting it out when you heard the Emmett Till reference?
Absolutely. 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. 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 fucking ‘Karate Chop’ video and he ripped the one with the Wayne verse and he put it out. On the mastered version, the final, that line wasn’t in there. He [the ripper] put it out and made everybody look like douchebags, but it wasn’t the plan.
Source: Sowmya Krishnamurthy for VIBE