Drake may have helped turn Young Money into one of hip-hop’s biggest powerhouse labels, but there was a time when he wasn’t even allowed on Lil Wayne‘s tour bus.
Adam Bhala Lough, the director behind Weezy’s iconic The Carter documentary, spoke with music journalist Andre Gee for his Substack newsletter about the making of the film, as well as the sequel which recently leaked online.
Reflecting on capturing Weezy at the peak of his powers during Tha Carter III era, Lough shared an amusing anecdote involving Drake and his “dorky” disconnect with the rest of Young Money.
“The majority of the time when I wasn’t shooting with Wayne, but when I was on set, Wayne would disappear and I was just hanging out with Tez [Bryant, Wayne’s then-manager], Mack Maine and Nicki Minaj,” he said. “At one point, I spent some time with her before Wayne did The Jimmy Kimmel Show, when nobody knew who she was, and they wouldn’t even let Drake on the bus. He was, like, such a dork that they wouldn’t even let him on the bus.”
He added: “When he started selling millions and millions of records, it was a different story entirely. But he was definitely not allowed on the bus and wouldn’t hang out with any of [them] because there were real Blood gang members around all the time. And I’m sure he was intimidated by them, too. I was, even though they were super cool to me. These are serious, Blood gang members with guns on them. Like, some shit could go down.”
Lough, who has also directed music videos for MF DOOM and a documentary about dub pioneer Lee “Scratch” Perry, also revealed that disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein and former Trump strategist Steve Bannon were originally on board to fund The Carter documentary.
“Quincy Jones III contacted me. He had seen one of my previous films, and he was like, ‘I really want to work with you. I have this company. We have a deal with an offshoot of Miramax.’ You’re not going to believe this, but it was a company owned by Harvey Weinstein and Steve Bannon,” he said.
“A lot of people don’t remember, but Steve Bannon actually came from Hollywood; he was a movie producer. So the original financiers of The Carter were going to be Harvey Weinstein and Steve Bannon, which would have been amazing if it had actually happened, but they shut down their company during production of the film.”
As for the sequel, Lough recently shared a rough cut on YouTube after hackers leaked the footage, which was recorded years earlier during Tha Carter and Tha Carter II eras. The two-hour video shows Lil Wayne playing unreleased music, hitting the studio with a young 2 Chainz (back when he was known as Tity Boi) and Curren$y, and discussing his issues with Cash Money Records.
It’s unclear if the film will be officially released, but Lough says he is aiming to produce a finished version and has had positive conversations with Weezy’s manager Fabian Marasciullo.
“There’s basically two options: There’s a big [streaming network] that would pick it up and put it out,” he said, describing his ideal scenario. “The other option that I talked to [Fabian] about was some type of self-distribution where we just put it out ourselves to the fans. We’ll see where it ends up. It’ll go how it needs to go.”
Lough also hinted at the sequel being broken up into two parts, saying: “There’s so much footage, I think maybe there could be two films. So in that regard, it would be like 40% done. But if it’s just this one part, then I would say closer to 70% done. But then it also needs to be mixed and color corrected and all that stuff.”
Lough’s rough cut can be seen below.
