Lil Wayne’s ’90s lyric notebook is now for sale for $5 million after a lengthy legal battle over ownership was settled earlier this year.
The item is up for bid at Moments in Time and was used by a 17-year-old Weezy in the 90s. Lyrics to tracks like “Grown Man,” which was released on The Carter II, as well as “We on Fire” by the Hot Boys and a doodle were some of the things scribbled in the notebook.
However, the $5 million auction price is historic. The notebook was discovered by an unnamed man in a car previously owned by an employee of Wayne’s Cash Money Records. He kept the notebook safe until 2019, when it was first auctioned for $250,000. Tunechi himself tried to legally block the sale, claiming the notebook had been misplaced and accusing the man of hiding the item until he wanted the money. He also filed a cease-and-desist against Moments in Time over the sale.
The man retaliated with the argument “Whoever finds it can keep it” and asked the court to name him as the rightful owner of the notebook. Wayne never responded, so the court ruled against him.
Last year on The Pivot PodcastWeezy announced that he stopped writing down his song lyrics after discovering JAY-Z was doing freestyles without a pen and paper.
“Like Biggie, love Biggie, love Jadakiss – I love all that shit, but Jay. When I heard it, I stopped. You could ask my boy. ‘I heard n-gga JAY-Z ain’t writing no more,'” Lil Wayne said at the time.
“We went into the studio and did ‘10,000 Bars’ and that was the last time I rapped anything off paper,” the hip-hop star added.