T-Shirt

Album: Culture (2017)
Charted: 19
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Songfacts®:

  • Quavo's mom is concerned about her son's trap lifestyle and doesn't want him dealing drugs.

    Momma told me not to sell work
    Seventeen five, same color T-shirt


    The line is borrowed from Shawty Lo's first verse on D4L's 2005 cut "I'm Da Man."
  • "Work" in this instance is drug-dealing. "Seventeen five" refers to buying a kilo of coke for the low price of $17,500. "Same color T-shirt" references the white T-shirts that are popular with drug dealers.
  • The Atlanta production duo of Nard & B came up with the beat. James "Nard" Bernard Rosser, Jr. and Brandon "B" Rackley have found success producing for likes of T.I. ("On Top of the World") and Maino ("All The Above") over the years.
  • Rosser told Genius the story of their beat:

    "That day we were in the studio and we had just got our hands on some new preset for the Electra2 Plugin. Anytime we get our hands on some new presets or new sounds, it triggers some creative juice on a whole other level for us. That's when we sparked the idea for the core melody for that beat. It was part of the batch - we'd actually done probably two or three beats with the same type of flavor that same day.

    I don't know if you can actually tell but the melody we put in is actually a reverse melody. We've actually done that in a couple other beats, but that one just so happened to catch Migos' ear when I sent it their way. But we were working on that one and it was just a regular day working with new sounds. We did the whole beat in Fruity Loops."
  • Nard & B have also worked with Future on a number of tracks including Future Hendrix's own song called "T-Shirt." Coincidentally, both of these cuts that are titled after the unisex short-sleeved shirt contain sounds that have been reversed.

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