Imagine a world where the iconic "Weezy F Baby and the F is for Phenomenal" lyric didn't exist? Would Lil Wayne still be where he's at today? While that's a ridiculous question to ponder-- because yes, he would be-- but that's a reality that was almost forced on us.
On the 2009 song "Yes," Lil Wayne uttered his now-famous line: "Weezy F Baby and the F is for Phenomenal."
Obviously, that word does not start with F so the line is pretty hilarious. Wayne only realized that after the song had dropped though and, apparently, he asked his then-manager Cortez Bryant if they could axe the bar from the song and mixtape once it was too late.
"The word starts with 'ph,' but he said 'f,' right?" says Cortez Bryant during his interview with Fake Shore Drive's Andrew Barber. "He was like, ‘Oh shit, I gotta change that.’ We released it. We had an argument about that. He not understanding the concept about digital, and it’s gone now…We had pressed tons of CDs, but he didn’t realize he spelled it wrong, and I didn’t catch it."
Wayne had been so adamant about correcting the mistake because, in Bryant's words, he's a perfectionist and wasn't alright with this actually being pushed out.
"Wayne is a perfectionist about that, using his words and prepositions in [the] correct way," he continued. "He might misspell something on purpose for lyrical exercise and wordplay, but he’s really precise about his wordplay. He was really down, pissed, ‘Fuck the whole mixtape’ just because of that one damn line."
This is Cortez Bryant's second high-profile interview of the week. In this one, he also spoke about the plan to bring all of Wayne's older mixtapes onto streaming services, which will obviously prove to be a tough task.
Listen above at the 18:30 mark to hear about how Tunechi wanted to pull the entire mixtape because of his "phenomenal" flub.