Most people never get a single chance in life. It is even rarer for those who are rewarded two. For Tauheed Epps, the 2 Chainz moniker is as symbolic as it is aspirational. Out of the ashes of Tity Boi, a member of Playaz Circle and a marginalized artist on Disturbing tha Peace, rose the rapper we know and love today as 2 Chainz.
On a recent episode of Everyday Struggle, 2 Chainz described what it took to pry himself from the cold grips of a Ludacris-led label: “I had to find me a lawyer, and then I ended up getting out. I had to pay him $100K per album, and I think, some other little, like a point, which to me, I've made $100K so many times, it was a pretty good deal to get out of it.” According to an infamous Kanye tweet in 2011, “2 Chainz is charging 100k for a verse now cause he’s good.” It illustrated just how far 2 Chainz came.
The Atlanta MC is a force of nature when it comes to the art of rapping. There aren’t many artists who could freestyle over Kendrick’s “DNA,” let alone make it sound like their own song. While freestyling for The LA Leakers, 2 Chainz threw out punchlines like, “Half a million for the restaurant I have to renovate/Man, I got so many demons. please don’t make me demonstrate,” which is a peak 2 Chainzian bar if I’ve ever heard one. For years, his appeal has been the way he can make the dichotomy of the trap and the luxurious lifestlye of a rapper work in your headphones and in the club. With his latest studio album, Pretty Girls Like Trap Music, coming Friday, we decided to round up the 2 Chainz verses that shifted the way the culture viewed him.
11. The Game f/ 2 Chainz and Rick Ross, "Ali Bomaye"
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Album: Jesus Piece (2012)
Standout Line: “From the P houses, did it from the wee hours/Sellin' that chicken; no lemon pepper, no sweet and sour”
2 Chainz has never sounded more epic than he does on Game's “Ali Bomaye.” His voice cuts through the Florence + the Machine “Seven Devils” sampling beat in such a cinematic way it feels like 2 Chainz is going to war with the instrumental and won’t return until he has its head to place on his mantle. Chainz comparing his drug selling to lemon pepper wings on a track with Rick Ross is such a meta way to launch into a song.
My favorite moment of “Ali Bomaye” is when 2 Chainz ends the verse with a short, hilarious, and completely arrogant story. Chainz says:
I like clubs where all the women workin naked
Fell in love with a waitress—what the fuck I’m thinkin?
Bought that ho a ring, it was for her pinky
Uhn, that’s pimpin, that’s slick
Got a bottle of cologne that cost more than your rent
First, falling in love with a waitress is fine. I do it all the time, but I could understand how this would be a no-no in the world of a rapper. Instead of the bar that explaining how Chainz is a simp, he reminds the listener that the price of his cologne could be listed right next to a studio apartment in Bushwick. 2 Chainz is not a simp—he smells good—and on “Ali Bomaye” he runs circles around Game and Rick Ross like they were those kids that would never stop rapping in your middle school cafeteria.
10. "Goodnight"
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Album: Codeine Cowboy (2011)
Standout Line: “They just a bunch of meatballs and I don't like spaghetti/I'm acting like R.Kelly/Left pissed off/I'm on Pirellis/I got a pistol in my Pelle/Bumpin' Trap-a-Velli”
The first verse on “Goodnight” might be the most hilarious in 2 Chainz’s entire discography. He starts with, “She got two chains on her spine/2 Chainz on her mind/I say 2 Chainz all the time/I got two chains on right now,” and then proceeds to repeat the phrase “I’m turnt up right now,” three times before telling himself, “You said that shit already.” He did say that shit already. He also wrote this verse, which makes it weird he’d have to remind himself, but 2 Chainz is on another plane of existence.
The highlight of “Goodnight” comes halfway through the verse when Chainz decides to rhyme spaghetti with R. Kelly, Pirellis, Pelle, and Trap-a-Velli. First, does 2 Chainz really not like spaghetti? Bold statement. I would agree many forms of pasta are overrated, but for a rapper who hosts a show called “Most Expensivest Shit,” I’m surprised he doesn’t enjoy a nice plate of spaghetti flown in from Italy. Most rappers would be content that they could string these words together no matter if they made sense or not. Not 2 Chainz. He ensures each bar is a punchline in and of itself. I was so entranced listening to 2 Chainz’s thoughts on meatballs I didn’t realize for awhile, “I’m acting like R. Kelly/Left pissed off,” is a hilarious, albeit low-hanging fruit, of a bar.
9. Chance the Rapper f/ 2 Chainz and Lil Wayne, "No Problem"
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Album: Coloring Book (2016)
Standout Line: “You old Petey Pablo, take your shirt off/ Wave ‘round your head like a helicopter”
At my first job out of college, there was a guy who claimed he played college basketball with 2 Chainz. As dubious as this seemed he did have an Instagram photo with Tity. He said that 2 Chainz “was always like that. Even back then when we all laughed at him, he still acted like he was going to be the best rapper someday.”
Every time Chainz gets on a high-profile feature it’s like he summons that same college kid no one believed in. When it comes to Chance the Rapper’s Grammy Award-winning “No Problem,” Chance has the most memorable moment (“If one more label try to stop me, it’s gon’ be some dreadhead niggas in ya lobby), Wayne has my favorite verse, but 2 Chainz, from a technical and performance perspective easily beats them both. Who else would have the vision to start a verse in 2017 with a Petey Pablo reference?
What I love most about Chainz’s verse on “No Problem” is that it points to the next phase in his career. When he spits, “Got a pocket full of money/And a mind full of ideas/Some of this shit may sound weird,” it’s an acknowledgment by Chainz that some of his more ludicrous ideas like a dabbin Santa Christmas sweater have been visionary. Not only did Chainz make $2 million off of the sweaters, but it also pointed to the fact that when it comes to ranking rapper business acumen we always go to Jay, Diddy, or Dr. Dre, but often forget budding moguls like Chainz. On “No Problem,” 2 Chainz closed the chapter on one part of his career and pointed to the next.
8. 2 Chainz and Lil Wayne, "Dedication" (Verse 1)
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Album: ColleGrove (2016)
Standout Line: “If it wasn’t for Wayne, it wouldn’t be/A lot of dudes in the game, including me”
“Dedication” isn’t 2 Chainz’s most dexterous verse. There's no unconventional flow, memorable rhyme pattern, and we don't get Chainz’s usual adlibs (“Tru!,” “2 Chainz!” etc.). However, “Dedication” tells a vivid and heartfelt story in the most efficient way possible. In the first verse he weaves meeting Wayne into a tale that includes mentioning little-known associate Lil Fee, the Hot Boys, Hurricane Katrina, Drake, and giving Wayne his first taste of lean. The verse is so real, 2 Chainz even talks about Wayne’s Jay Z tattoos.
In 2007, Wayne infamously took the Playaz Circle track “Duffle Bag Boy” hostage, bound its appendages tight, mailed the ransom note to the rap game, still killed it, and showed little remorse. What made it worse was the fact that Wayne didn’t even have a verse on the song; he was only on the hook. Almost a decade later Chainz and Wayne came together for the 2016 collaborative album ColleGrove. Over the course of an entire album, Chainz proved the student had become the master and regularly out rapped Wayne without breaking a sweat. But as "Dedication" explains, these guys still love each other regardless.
7. 2 Chainz f/ Lil Wayne, "Yuck" (Verse 1)
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Album: Based On A T.R.U. Story
Standout Line: “Known to act a donkey on the camel-toe/Then take the camel-toe and turn it into casserole”
2 Chainz seems like he has “Duffle Bag Boy” PTSD anytime he gets on a track with Wayne. For the opener of his 2012 major label debut, Based On A T.R.U. Story, Chainz launches into a monster of a verse. There are food quotables: “known to act a donkey on the camel-toe/Then take the camel-toe and turn it into casserole.” Chainz drops his customary reference to his name: “So many chains on it look like my neck gone.” He even references “Similac,” in the line “before Benihana's it was canned goods/Before canned goods it was Similac." In 2012, Chainz was at the height of his power and “Yuck” is a re-introduction to the world. His verse is packed with everything old fans had come to love about Tity, and what new fans would soon be mesmerized by.
6. 2 Chainz f/ Kanye West, "Birthday Song" (Verse 1)
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Album: Based On A T.R.U. Story (2012)
Standout Line: “You the realest nigga breathing if I hold my breath”
“Birthday Song” is not a great song. After hearing Kanye and Chainz on “Mercy” I thought their musical chemistry would burn bright for years to come. Then I heard “Birthday Song” and immediately wanted to claw the skin off my face. Regardless, it still houses a superb 2 Chainz verse. “You the realest nigga breathing if I hold my breath,” is a top-five 2 Chainz line. He also does an amazing job of starting “Birthday Song,” with the hook “When I die bury me inside the Gucci store/When I die bury me inside the Louis store,” and by the end of his first verse talking about the “Truey store." On a song about birthdays, which are, of course, about celebrating life as you march to your inevitable death, 2 Chainz makes funeral planning seem like the most fun thing in the entire world.
5. 2 Chainz f/ Pharrell, "Feds Watching" (Verse 1)
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Album: B.O.A.T.S. II #MeTime
Standout Line: “Billie Jean red leather, same color Red Lobster”
There are two things 2 Chainz is very good at when it comes to crafting verses. The first is his penchant for delivering non-sequiturs like he’s an overworked midwife; the second is his way of describing opulence in completely bizarre ways. My favorite part of the Pharrell produced, “Feds Watching” is trying to understand how 2 Chainz's brain connected Michael’s Jackson’s famous red leather jacket to the color of a lobster’s shell, and then connecting that to the seafood chain.
The first verse of “Feds Watching” also utilizes a famous 2 Chainz trick. If you listen to enough of his music you’ll realize he likes to start a verse slow and then proceed to throw out short, rapid bars that flex his ability to rhyme a slew of words in quick succession. Take the bars:
Dreads hang on designer everything
Mr. Comme des Garçons, Mr. Alexander Wang
Mr. Chain, pinky ring, flow insane, ho insane
Chainz rhymes “hang” in the first bar with “wang” in the second and “chain and insane” in the third. Plus “everything” which ends the first bar comes back in the third to rhyme with ring. 2 Chainz first and foremost is a technician on “Feds Watching,” Pharrell got a supreme performance out of him.
4. Travis Scott f/ 2 Chainz and Future, "3500"
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Album: Rodeo (2015)
Standout Line: “I was born with a mean mug/I was born with some nappy hair/Drinkin' breast milk out a lean cup/Tity Boi's my alias”
2 Chainz is perhaps the funniest rapper alive. (In an another life, he's the lead of his own sitcom instead of an Atlanta rapper named after his necklaces.) He begins his “3500” verse with the line, “My bathtub size of swimming pools, backstroke to my children’s room.” I don’t know about you, but my bathtub is small and could not accommodate even one backstroke. This simultaneously makes me feel bad about my financial situation and happy that 2 Chainz is a great dad who is so rich he needs to have the swimming skills of Ryan Lochte to say goodnight to his children. And that's not even the best line on the verse.
3. Kanye West f/ Quavo, Gucci Mane, Yo Gotti, Big Sean, Desiigner, and 2 Chainz, "Champions"
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Album: N/A
Standout Line: "I took a nap in the pulpit/I never like how a suit fit/I got a pocket full of money/It got me walkin all slue-foot"
2 Chainz didn't need to give us more after the four opening bars of the best verse on the 2016 G.O.O.D. Music posse cut, "Champions"—they're perfect. He's moneyed up and reckless and blasphemous. He's falling asleep in church; he's uncomfortable in a suit that cost more than my life. The cash in his pocket has him walking clumsy. And because he's a genius, he makes that description of his graceless country gait jam up the rhyming pattern: "pulpit" to "suit fit" to "slue-foot." That near rhyme blacked me out. I don't remember what happened afterward. I came to on the subway platform and when the crescent moon of a crowd gathered around my crumpled body asked what the matter was I moaned, "2 Chaaaaaaaaiiiinzzzz." —Ross Scarano
2. 2 Chainz "Spend It" (Verse 1)
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Album: T.R.U. REALigion (2011)
Standout Line: “I'll take ya wife, give her back/Nine months after that, Similac!”
The first verse for “Spend It” is when the 2 Chainz verse became what we know it as today. It is full of the trademarks we associate with the freewheeling Atlanta rapper: punchlines, outrageous humor, and rap lines that effectively work as any hook.
To this day, the way 2 Chainz delivers the line “I’ll take ya wife, give her back/Nine months after that, Similac,” is an eighth wonder of the world. Would I let 2 Chainz "take" my wife if he promised to yell “Similac” at me in real life? There is a firm possibility. From there Chainz continues the absurdity by rapping, “Similar to saying mama's baby daddy maybe uhh/When we had sex I was in the Mercedes/And I ain't crazy but if that’s my baby/Then we gonna have to name that lil baby Mercedes.” This is possibly the second best line about naming your daughter after a car, only eclipsed by Kanye’s, “Couldn't afford a car, so she named her daughter Alexis” on “All Falls Down.”
1. Kanye West f/ 2 Chainz, Pusha T, and Big Sean, "Mercy"
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Album: Cruel Summer (2012)
Standout Line: “Grade A, A1, chain the color of Akon/Black diamonds, backpack rhymin', co-signed by Louis Vuitton”
Somewhere in the multiverse, there is a darker timeline than this one. In this universe, Trump is still President, bees are still dying at an alarming rate, but when you play “Mercy” there is no 2 Chainz verse.
It is hard to describe how seismic his turn on “Mercy” was. Without 2 Chainz completely obliterating the song, I don’t think he would’ve had the same career resurgence that included a platinum album, Drake and Kanye features, and dabbing Santa sweaters.
The verse distills everything Chainz had been building organically since his name change, and packages it for mass consumption. His punchlines are epic. In the span of one verse, Chainz describes his “coupe the color of mayonnaise” and then spits his chain is the “color of Akon.” At certain points Chainz becomes his own hype man punctuating the end of his bars with a “Tell ‘em” or “damn” like he can’t believe how great he is at rapping. It's a once-in-a-lifetime moment of a rap.
