As you may or may not know, I've been known to occasionally post some lyrics on this here blog. I had an idea for some, and was just listening to a few songs to orient myself in a proper cadence. Unsuprisingly, lyrics are easier to write if you have an idea of what they should sound like.
So I'm bopping along to the JoBros, Lady Gags, the usual, when I get to Jadakiss. I'm listening to his early aughts hit, "Why", when I get to the lyric that always gets me. Jada asks some prescient and hard-hitting questions beforehand: Why they never get it poppin' but they party to death? Why his diesel have fiends in the spot on the floor for days? Why did Kobe have to hit that raw? He was truly on a question-asking tear, when he gets to one that he answers himself:
"You know why they made the new 20's? Because I got all the old ones. That's why."
Far be it from me to criticize, but his question-answering leaves much to be desired.
First of all, I have an old 20. If your lyric can be easily disproved by a peek into the listener's wallet, you might have slightly overstated your wealth.
But it was hyperbole, you say. I say, fine. But that still doesn't excuse him, because it reflects a fundamental misunderstanding about the way our financial systems work. An egregious one.
If I can parse the lyric, Jadakiss apparently believes that in the event that one single person held every single bill of a particular denomination, the government wouldn't investigate this peculiar occurence, but would just begin to produce more. Furthermore, one has to wonder why, a man of such immense wealth wouldn't look into using stocks, or a bank, or even bigger bills. It seems foolhardy to keep all of your money in cash, especially when doing so can have deleterious effects on the economy it relies on.
Such deleterious effects, one might argue, that it would negatively impact the value of the bills. This isn't even taking into account the missed opportunity cost of keeping his money liquid and not investing so much as a single 20.
I've got a new lyric for you to Jadakiss:
"Why the fuck you got so many twenties/I can only surmise you didn't take Macro in college"
It doesn't rhyme, but I'm pretty sure it's more true than his.
Anyway, this was just a quick one while I write the lyrics. Those should be done tonight or tomorrow or whenver I'm not too lazy.