Lil Wayne’s Handwritten Lyrics Found In Trash Can Valued At $5M
Written by b87fm on 09/06/2026
Lil Wayne’s handwritten lyrics from 1999 are now on the market for $5 million after winning a legal battle over ownership.
Lil Wayne’s handwritten lyrics from 1999 are sitting in a safe deposit box right now with a $5 million price tag attached.
These aren’t just any old pages either. They’re the only known handwritten lyrics from the rapper’s early career, and they’ve already survived a legal battle that took years to resolve.
The story starts at a car dealership in New Orleans back in 1999. A high school kid working there watched as Cash Money Records co-founder Bryan “Birdman” Williams rolled up with an entourage to trade in luxury vehicles.
After they left, dealership staff cleaned out the cars and tossed items into the garbage.
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That’s where the future owner found several pages of handwritten lyrics mixed in with CDs and DVDs. He grabbed them because they looked interesting and kept them for nearly three decades.
The pages contained lyrics to “I Feel” and “We On Fire,” both tracks that appeared on the Hot Boys’ 1999 album Guerilla Warfare.
The sheets included doodles of the Magnolia Projects and a phone number for Club Whispers, a New Orleans East nightclub popular with rappers.
The finder stuck everything inside a magazine copy and forgot about it.
In 2019, the owner decided to sell the lyrics through Moments In Time, an online auction agency, with an asking price of $250,000, and that’s when things got complicated.
According to reporting from NOLA.com, Wayne’s attorney Jonathan Davis sent a cease-and-desist letter claiming the rapper had “misplaced” the notebook and wanted it back.
The auction got pulled immediately.
Years later, attorney Louis Koerner Jr. decided to fight back on behalf of his client.
He sued Wayne in Orleans Parish Civil District Court in 2023, citing Louisiana law that grants ownership of a movable object to whoever possesses it for 10 years.
The legal battle stayed relatively quiet and civil. Davis eventually decided not to continue the fight, and in February 2024, Judge Kern A. Reese entered a final judgment confirming the seller’s ownership.
The seller and his attorney believe these Wayne lyrics are worth more because they’re the only known handwritten example from his early work.
