The lengthy, tangled process of recording The Turn Up G.H.O.D motivated Money to record his next big project on his own, without a studio and with a minimum of collaborators. Last January he holed up in his home studio for two weeks to record about 20 tracks, enlisting only two guest rappers. “I just had to find myself,” he says. “I had to get away from everybody, get away from the corporate people for a minute, get away from other peoples’ studios for a minute, and just go into my cocoon.” Money emerged with Cinco de Money and a voice that’s uniquely his: he’d fine-tuned his breakneck rapping, his unorthodox, slippery flow, and his novel approach to street storytelling. “I’m a Pisces, so I be thinking differently sometimes,” he says.
Money’s fierce rapping and sharp lyrics on Cinco de Money work in tandem, creating so much energy it’s as though he’s fueling himself. His corkscrew flow lights up the percussionless opening of “Reckless,” and when the track’s booming bass and brittle hi-hats kick in at the 45-second mark, the transition is like a powder keg going off. The mixtape as a whole seems to have had a similar effect on its audience: “It wasn’t until last year that I think everything clicked for him,” says Barber. “While I thought his music was cool, it didn’t really grab me until Cinco de Money.”
The mixtape has earned Money praise not just from Rolling Stone but also from Pitchfork and other mainstream outlets, and it began a year that’s broadened his perspective. In May he opened a Metro show for Yasiin Bey (formerly Mos Def), who invited him to London for a weekend in June to see the opening day of the Wireless Festival from backstage—Money’s first trip outside the States. “I kind of had to step away from Sibley for a second and really just see the world from a different point of view,” he says. He says hanging with Bey influenced the content of “United Center.”
Money says that when he read Rolling Stone’s list of the best rap albums of 2015, he scrapped the material he’d planned to release as Cinco de Money 2 the same day. He has high hopes for the music he’s making to replace it, and he aims to draw on the same powerful perspective that informs “United Center.” “I’m aware of the young and dumb motherfuckers that listen to me, ’cause I am them and they are me,” Money says. “Every chance I get, I get some knowledge from somewhere that they can’t get it from, and I bring it to them. That’s the most I can do.”
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