Kendrick Lamar - Money Trees (RemK Remix)

Who is RemK and what gives them the sheer nerve to remix “Money Trees,” one of the most beloved rap songs of the last fifteen years? Turns out, exactly the right amount of nerve. This flip drags the Kendrick and Jay Rock classic bodily into trap territory: that iconic reversed guitar loop still there, still hypnotic, now sitting on top of skittering hi-hats and a sub-bass the original never once bothered with. Touching something this sacred is a genuine risk, the kind that ends most producers, and RemK mostly pulls it off by flatly refusing to overplay their hand. The vocal is left almost entirely alone, the new elements stay in service of the mood, and the 808s hit with real weight in the drop without ever collapsing into generic festival-trap. What actually got me is the restraint of it; a lesser producer would have buried Kendrick under a wall of bass simply because the software let them. As a 2am, bass-heavy reimagining it more than earns the right to exist, which is not a sentence I expected to write about a Trap Nation upload of a Section.80-era classic. That reversed loop remains one of the great samples in all of modern rap, and RemK was smart enough to know it and leave the thing well alone. Play the original first. Then let this one keep the night going.

Buy / stream this track →