Jermaine Dupri Recalls Creating "Money Ain't A Thang" With Jay-Z
Jermaine Dupri Recalls Creating "Money Ain't A Thang" With Jay-Z
by Omar Burgess
posted November 28, 2012 at 11:10AM PST | 12 comments

In an interview with Fuse, Jermaine Dupri recalls turning a Steve Arrington sample and a Jay-Z line into a hit song.
Although his multiplatinum R&B work with the likes of Usher and Mariah Carey usually draw the headlines, Jermaine Dupri says
he’s a certified vinyl buff. The So So Def Founder opened up his walk
in vinyl collection to Fuse’s cameras and told the stories behind some
of his most memorable hits—including the 1998 Jay-Z collaboration,
“Money Ain’t A Thang.”
“When I used the ‘Weak At The Knees’
sample, I couldn’t believe nobody had ever used that beat,” JD told Fuse
during an interview for the “Crate Diggers” series.
“I played it, and I was like, ‘Oh man, I gotta use this! I had an hour
before Jay-Z was landing, and I was going to pick Jay-Z up from the
airport…I was listening to [‘Can’t Knock The Hustle’] when he was
saying, ‘Deep in the South kicking up top game / Bouncing on the highway
switching four lanes / Screaming through the sunroof money ain’t a
thang…’”
Dupri added that the impromptu listening session gave
him the inspiration to sample Jay-Z’s voice on a track that Jay would
also appear on. He noted that it was one of the first times that an
artist sampled their own lines on one of their songs.
While the song itself doesn’t appear in the list of Jay-Z or Dupri’s most commercially successful Billboard singles, it can be found on JD’s certified platinum album, Jermaine Dupri Presents: Life In 1472 and Jay-Z’s quintuple platinum album, Hard Knock Life, Volume 2.
The full “Crate Diggers” interview, which also features JD explaining
how he crafted hits for Usher and highlights from his conversation with
Michael Jackson, can be seen below.