The way that the song really started, is we were right in the middle of, towards the end of when Carter V was really supposed to come out [2014] back in the day. Wayne called me, and he was working on a song, and he was like, “Yo, come and get the vocals to this thing that I’m working on. See if you can make a new beat around it.” I went and picked up the vocals. Angel [Aponte], who was working for him at the time, I picked up the files from him and me and Angel went up to my studio after. We made a five-minute beat. It wasn’t anything special or crazy, some of it is still in the final version. We played it for Wayne, and then that turned into the concept of “Mona Lisa.”

He started writing to the beat, and it turned into the story. I heard it and I was like, “Oh, shit, this is crazy.” Then he did a second verse and at the time, his engineer was a dude named Omar Loya. Wayne was talking about trying to get a feature on the song. Everybody was kinda like, “Maybe Nas would be crazy because it’s a storytelling song.” Omar was the one who said, “Kendrick would be cool.” Boom. I know Wayne and Kendrick linked up in the studio, and I wasn’t invited, which bummed me out.

A couple days later, I heard Kendrick’s verse. Wayne played me the whole thing, and it was a whole different ball game. Production-wise, I had to match them. And then that’s where the lawsuit happened. Before we even got a chance to touch the record, everything just got put on pause. Years went by of maybe it’s coming out, maybe it’s not.