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Music

A Year of Lil Wayne: How a Second-Tier British Soccer Team's History Is Like Cash Money Records

What happens when new institutions emerge?

Day 200: "Millionaire Dream" feat. Lil Wayne and Cadillac – Big Tymers, How You Luv That, 1997

I've been casually watching soccer this afternoon; I barely follow the English Premier League, so I had very little context for Bournemouth–Chelsea (sorry English colleagues at this website). As a result, I was surprised to see how small and casual the stadium they were playing in was. That stadium, Dean Court, holds 11,464 people and has been AFC Bournemouth's home pitch since 1910. For some perspective, this makes it older than every professional sports stadium in the United States, including such venerated institutions as Fenway Park and Wrigley Field. Dean Court is mostly simple bleachers, which puts it in sharp contrast to the luxury box-filled megastadiums of the top US and UK markets. However, AFC Bournemouth, despite being a professional sports team with an incredibly rich history, just entered the Premier League for the first time last year. So the team is simultaneously one marked by rich history and one that has only just begun to establish itself as a certain level of institution. It's not unlike, say, Gonzaga joining the ranks of NCAA men's basketball's elite programs or Denver becoming an increasingly prominent American city.

In the context of music, it taps into something that I've been thinking about lately, which is how new institutions arise. Even stuff that feels incredibly well established to us now, like Def Jam or Atlantic Records, is stuff that, at one point, was just a new business not guaranteed to go anywhere. Not only did they make it, but their legacy seems well established for plenty of time to come. Cash Money Records, on the other hand, is in a weird limbo where it could potentially tip into that territory or fall into the annals of storied but failed history like Chess Records. A lot of that hinges on how the Birdman-Wayne relationship shakes out in the coming years. But whether or not it works out, as Andrew's post the other day emphasized, it's fascinating to look at the moment when Cash Money hit the first tipping point over into phenomenon—their arrival in the Premier League, so to speak. That came with the $30 million Universal deal. It's awesome to look at Cash Money at this juncture, when they are beginning to reach the tier of monster success but not quite there yet, still just trucking away and making dope songs again and again.

"Millionaire Dream" is one such song. Wayne already sounds like a superstar, at 15, but he also just sounds like a precocious kid. Despite being neither old enough to drink nor old enough to drive legally, he sounds preternaturally cocky as he boasts, "Pull up in my Lex-us, sipping on Don P / Call me / The baby Pacino of CMB." As the old man I am now, listening to a child rap that today would make me nervous for his well-being, but we all know how this story turned out, so instead we can listen to this as the victory lap it is, Cash Money Records becoming a worldwide phenomenon. It's fuckin' dope! Wayne goes off! Listen below and appreciate history!

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