Lil Wayne's Emmett Till line on "Karate Chop (Remix)" has been responsible for much controversy, the peak of which ended with Wayne being dropped from his Mountain Dew endorsement. Metro Boomin, the producer of the track, argues that all of these issues could have been avoided, as the line was not intended to be included on the final version, and just happened to be included on the leak.
"We didn’t even intend for it to come out like that," Metro Boomin said in an interview with Vibe. "It was serious. I was like, 'Honestly, it will be no good' so we took the line out. But there was a music video…The whole reason the song came out prematurely is [because] it got leaked. I’m not even going to say his name. He had ripped the song off the video director’s…Uh, I guess the video director fell asleep uploading the video, to his Vimeo. He [the ripper] always checks the Vimeo for content and one day he lucked up on the fucking ‘Karate Chop’ video and he ripped the one with the Wayne verse and he put it out. On the mastered version, the final, that line wasn’t in there. He [the ripper] put it out and made everybody look like douchebags, but it wasn’t the plan."
Lil Wayne's line did however end up on the official release of the remix as well, which Metro did not comment on. It's possible that a decision was made to include the line, as there was seemingly no vocal opposition to it until later.
Future recently spoke about the line, indicating that it shed positive light on the memory of Emmett Till, and generated awareness of his tragic murder.
A new version of "Karate Chop" was released last week with Birdman, Rick Ross, and French Montana in the place of Wayne. Have a listen here.
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