Birdman Talks State Of Young Money, Lil Wayne

The head of Cash Money talks about Young Money's hustle, and how they got by without their biggest star.

There's no questioning Young Money's success this year. With Lil Wayne's Rebirth and I Am Not a Human Being, in addition to Drake's Thank Me Later and Nicki Minaj's Pink Friday being among rap's highest-selling releases, the collective has done extremely well.

In a recent interview with XXLMag, Cash Money founder and CEO Birdman spoke about the group's concerted effort. "Aww man, this is what we worked hard and put all of these years in for. It feels good; it’s beyond words. We look at it like this, next year we have to have more, so we have to work harder. This is just giving us different ways to motivate ourselves."

The former Big Tymer elaborated, explaining what it meant to accomplish all this with Young Money's number one attraction - Lil Wayne. "We had to just buckle down. Losin’ [Wayne], that was big, so we had to go and get another motivation and that was our motivation. We wanted— just when he came home, to show the young boy what we’ve accomplished. Everybody played their part, as a team. Everybody supported each other as a team. It really brought a lot of us closer. And with [Wayne] being home, we’re even closer.

"[Losing Wayne] was a gift and a curse. The curse is that young’n had to do the time; the gift is that we united up and everybody came to the table."