“Seeing Green” by Nicki Minaj, Drake & Lil Wayne

Apparently the term “seeing green” is another way of saying ‘making money’. So when the Young Money gang says they’re “seeing green” – an assertion that all three of them make individually – it appears that such is an allusion to their wealth, or something like that. 

Ultimately it kinda doesn’t matter considering that by all means the featured raps are going to be braggadocious, and of at the center of said boastings lie the artists’ wealth, fame or what have you. 

But ultimately, whereas there is your standard amount of name-brand dropping going on, the lyrics aren’t squarely centered on riches. For instance, Lil Wayne dedicates ample bars to gun violence and sexual musings, as does Drake the latter. 

Drizzy also alludes to his standing as one of the top rappers in the game, as does Nicki Minaj, though at least they seem to lyrically challenge themselves, to some degree, not to do so directly. 

And at the end of the day, “Seeing Green” features exactly the type of rhetoric you would expect from these three. In response to this song Nicki Minaj has pointed out that, in her opinion, that her collaborators outperformed her. But for the most part, it seems they all performed as generally expected in terms of exalting themselves.

“Beam Me Up Scotty”

“Seeing Green” was one of three new songs that were added onto the playlist of the re-release of Nicki Minaj’s mixtape “Beam Me Up Scotty”. In other words, it wasn’t featured on the original release of the project in 2009. But when Republic Records, Cash Money Records and Young Money Entertainment re-issued on 14 May 2021, it was included.

Collaboration

As alluded to earlier, Nicki, Drake and Wayne are regular collaborators. In fact it is Wayne who is credited with putting the other two on under Young Money Entertainment, a label that he founded. 

And as labelmate rappers tend to do, they’ve crossed over on each other’s tracks a number of times throughout the years. But even beyond that it would appear that the three of them possess a genuine friendship. For instance, in 2017 the trio dropped a track entitled “No Frauds”. Many people interpreted the song as Wayne and Drake backing Nicki up, as at the time she was embroiled in a serious back and forth with another rapper, Remy Ma.

Writing Credits for “Seeing Green”

The three rappers are credited as the writers of “Seeing Green”, as are the following:

• Carlos Brody
• Nashiem Myrick
• Andrew Ramsey
• Shannon Sanders 

And the producers of the track are a couple of artists known as Kid Masterpiece and Govi.

The aforementioned Andrew and Shannon are actually a music-composition duo known as Drew & Shannon. And they’re acknowledged on “Seeing Green” as the track samples another they wrote and produced back in 2005, “In My Mind” by Heather Headley.