Video hit ZZ Top

ZZ Top – I Gotsta Get Paid

As if it weren’t weird enough for ZZ Top use a commercial for Jeremiah Weed malt liquor to debut the first single from its upcoming new album, here’s something you may not have realized about the song itself.

The new track, I Gotsta Get Paid, is a thinly rewritten cover of ’25 Lighters,’ a local late ’90s hit for Houston hip-hop artists DJ DMD, Lil Keke, and MC Fat Pat.

In fact, as ‘Battleship‘ director Peter Berg remembers, ZZ Top was actually calling their version ’25 Lighters’ when producer Rick Rubin pitched it for inclusion on the film’s soundtrack.

Berg recalled his meeting with Rubin for the Hollywood Reporter: “I played an old ZZ Top song that I really liked and he said, ‘Yeah, that’s pretty good, but listen to this,’ and he played me this crazy song … It’s this old gangsta hip-hop song about drug dealing, but it sounded like a rock song. I was like, ‘This is insane, who made this?’ and he said, ‘ZZ Top; it’s new.”

The connection between the two songs was further illustrated by the Houston Press, where the history of ’25 Lighters’ is traced from its appearance on a pair of late ’90s Houston hip-hop compilations to its incorporation into a hit for rapper Big K.R.I.T. last year.

The lyrics:

25 lighters on my dressa, yessa

You know I gotta get paid

25 lighters on my dressa, yessa

You know I gotsta get paid

I got 25 lighters on my 25 folks

Gonna break the bank run 25 more

Bout to reap the suits with 25 flows

I got 25 lighters well don't cya know

25 flight diamonds in my ring

25 12s in the trunks to bang, oh lord

Make it move makin 25 mill'

Goin off a big don 99 seville cmon

25 lighters on my dressa, dressa

I gotsta get paid

I got 25 lighters on my dressa, dressa

You know I gotta get paid

Zig and me slammin 'bout 25 doors

Representing for the doors that holdin 25 more

Zz done put 25 out the door

Hittin the highway gon' do it, took 25 shows

25 lighters on my dressa, dressa

You know I gotta get paid

25 lighters on my dressa, dressa

Yessa I gotsta get paid

25 lighters on my dressa, yessa

I gotta gotta get paid I

25 lighters on my dressa, yessa

You know I got to get paid

Uh, cmon

Just check me out

All I got is a 25 ahaha