Kendrick Lamar’s Money Trees Lyrics Explained—And Why They Hit Harder in 2025

The genius of Money Trees lies in its contradictions: a beat soft as dusk, lyrics sharp as broken glass.

Money Trees lyrics glow up in your head long after the track fades. Maybe it’s the way “ya bish” slurs like a side-eye.

Maybe it’s the Beach House flip turning dusk into midnight. Or maybe it’s the kind of line you wish you didn’t recognise in real life: “Everybody gon’ respect the shooter.”

The pull of quick money and the price that trails it, told with a voice that sounds both calm and cornered.

Kendrick places Money Trees inside the diary-like arc of good kid, m.A.A.d city, the 2012 album released on October 22 through TDE, Aftermath and Interscope.

Kendrick Lamar good kid, m.A.A.d city Album Cover

Writing credits include, Kendrick, DJ Dahi, Jay Rock, Beach House’s Victoria Legrand and Alex Scally – hint at the alchemy here: a reverse-engineered sample that bends beauty into bait, production with its “shoulders low” to let Kendrick’s voice grip you, and Anna Wise’s ghostly harmonies humming like a conscience.

It samples Beach House’s “Silver Soul,” a dreamy hook repurposed into something a little colder, a little closer.

On first listen, the song feels almost too beautiful for its subject. That’s deliberate.

Dahi has talked about discovering and reshaping samples onstage and in lectures, and the Silver Soul reverse is one of those moves that bends mood into meaning. Beauty becomes bait.

A deep dive into Money Trees unveils Kendrick Lamar’s unique genius and his bold commentary on societal norms.

Read the Money Trees lyrics closely and you find a map of temptation and consequence.

Kendrick is that kid from Compton who can list choices with prayer-book clarity, then admit how thin the distance is between them.

What is Money Trees about, really. The chorus answers in plain language.

“It go Halle Berry or hallelujah,” then “Pick your poison, tell me what you doin’,” then the line that became a neighbourhood proverb, “Everybody gon’ respect the shooter, but the one in front of the gun lives forever.”

That sequence is a fork in the road, lust or salvation, clout or a name people refuse to forget.

Read it as a simple yin and yang. Both paths demand judgement. The shooter line flips the street code; the person in front of the gun becomes the name the block keeps, proof that a trigger never equals real respect.

He lands on “Money trees is the perfect place for shade.” It reads like something learned later, a hard truth softened by time.

If you are going to be unhappy, it feels less brutal when the bills are paid. Shade as relief. Shade as cover.

You can tie it back to the album’s story, recalling Uncle Tony’s death at Louie’s Burgers and foreshadowing later events, which is why that couplet hits like a bell every time it lands.

Kendrick has described the theme as temptation and the pull of material things.

Jay Rock, in the same conversation, kept it even simpler, calling it “about temptation,” then admitting “everything was about money” at the time.

“Every time he played it, I’m like, ‘Run it back.’” That is the energy of the record, the heat of a loop you refuse to leave.

He once told The Guardian he wanted to show the person in front of the gun, not just the shooter. You hear that ethic all over this record.

Each is a short flash from the full lyric, and each is a door into the song’s questions about comfort, risk and survival.

There is a living map inside the Money Trees lyrics. The first verse sketches the heist logic of a teenage brain that thinks like a schedule.

“From nine to five, I know it’s vacant,” then lets memory tumble out over noodles, Usher on the radio, and a name that will come back to haunt him, Sherane.

When he says “Money trees is the perfect place for shade,” it sounds like relief until the next breath lists everything a single dollar can do to your circle, to your plans, to your morals. Read it as a cost-benefit sheet in wet ink.

Then the dollar-run. “A dollar might f* your main bitch” is money buying access and buying your silence.

“A dollar might say f*** the niggas that you came with” can mean distance from your day ones or a cool dismissal of your co-signs.

“A dollar might just make that lane switch” is literal and figurative; money changes routes, friendships, behaviour.

“A dollar might turn to a million and we all rich” is the hope that one spark feeds the whole circle, that your win lifts your people and breaks old patterns.

Not only the paper. The work, the self-discipline, the way you give what’s in your heart. That is the currency that lasts.

Fans place Money Trees right after the Sherane incident, a chapter where fantasy takes the front seat and the urge for payback rides shotgun.

One top comment sums up the hook’s math as “Halle Berry or hallelujah” on one axis and a respect economy on the other, then circles back to the bridge as a set of rules you recite to keep focus.

The thread even notes why the song keeps bubbling up for new listeners, it “went TikTok viral,” which explains how a deep cut behaves like a single a decade later.

There’s also the quiet chord that Anna Wise adds in the back, that human layer peeking through the glassy surface.

And then Jay Rock, whose guest verse is a neighborhood report delivered with a gravel calm that critics keep calling out years later.

He arrives like a second camera angle. “From the gardens where the grass ain’t cut, them serpents lurkin’, blood,” then a roll call of survival moves and corner-store theology. It is a verse that changes the room temperature.

“Broken promises, steal your watch and tell you what time it is,” “Dreams of me gettin’ shaded under a money tree.”

Those bars make the title image literal, shade as safety, shade as a place where your back finally meets a wall that will not move.

Today Money Trees is a study in how comfort can be a trap and a shield at the same time.

“Shade” is not only luxury. It is cover. In 2025, with everyone posting hustle like a religion, that word reads like permission to slow your pulse without lying to yourself about where the breeze came from.

The bridge functions as a mantra of limits, Anna Wise chanting “No way” into a list of lines you do not cross, a small but crucial contrast to the dollar-drunk middle of the chorus.

That tug is why the track plays equally well at 2 p.m. on the commute and 2 a.m. when your guard is down.

Connect the dots between album story and local memory. Uncle Tony and Louie’s Burgers, a specific Compton landmark that turns a clever chorus into a memorial.

When you know that layer, “the one in front of the gun lives forever” stops sounding like a punchline and turns into a vow.

Rolling Stone ranked Money Trees as Kendrick’s greatest song to date, while other outlets have singled out Rock’s verse as one of the era’s most memorable guest spots. His presence gives the track a second centre of gravity.

The song’s public life has had a second wind. Without even being a single, it once hovered at No. 19 on the Billboard Bubbling Under Hot 100, then rode streaming waves more than a decade later to year-end positions in far-flung markets.

ARIA’s official 2023 year-end singles list has Money Trees at No. 89, and the Official Charts Company shows it peaking at No. 18 on the UK Hip Hop and R&B Singles Chart in 2025, plus a week on the UK Streaming Chart.

If you want context alongside Money Trees lyrics, it helps to remember how Kendrick frames his own art.

Early on, around this era, he talked about vulnerability and humanity rather than invincibility.

Years later, he reflected on the responsibility that came with success, a reminder that these stories aren’t there to glamorise shortcuts. They’re there to show the moment you choose.

What Kendrick and Jay Rock say about it still frames the cleanest read.

Temptation is the engine. Money is the bait. “That’s about temptation,” Jay Rock says, then admits the tunnel vision of that season.

Kendrick’s summary points to lust and the want for things that flash, which is why those short lyric shards work on loop. “Pick your poison.” “Money trees is the perfect place for shade.” Every chant is a choice.

If you crave a little more glue between mood and meaning, try this listening path.

Play “Money Trees,” then immediately cue Jay Rock’s “Money Trees Deuce.” The first is the rush and the reach. The second feels like aftermath and inventory.

That pairing gives you a before and after that stands up even if you have the album’s voicemail skits memorised.

Last, a small craft note for 2025 ears. The beat’s softness is a trick. It warms your hand while the lyrics tighten the grip.

That is why the song keeps circling back on social feeds and comment threads and why long comments on social media still unpack the hook like a riddle worth solving.

If you had to carry one line into the week, carry this one and test it against your habits, “the one in front of the gun lives forever.”

What do you want remembered, the shot or the person who stood there.

Kendrick Lamar Money Trees Lyrics

Verse 1: Kendrick Lamar
Uh, me and my niggas tryna get it, ya bish (Ya bish, ya bish)
Hit the house lick: tell me, is you wit’ it, ya bish? (Ya bish, ya bish)
Home invasion was persuasive (Was persuasive, was persuasive)
From nine to five I know it’s vacant, ya bish (Ya bish, ya bish)
Dreams of livin’ life like rappers do (Like rappers do, like rappers do)
Back when condom wrappers wasn’t cool (They wasn’t cool, they wasn’t cool)
I fucked Sherane and went to tell my bros (Tell my bros, tell my bros)
Then Usher Raymond “Let It Burn” came on (“Let Burn” came on, “Let Burn” came on)
Hot sauce all in our Top Ramen, ya bish (Ya bish, ya bish)
Park the car, then we start rhymin’, ya bish (Ya bish, ya bish)
The only thing we had to free our mind (Free our mind, free our mind)
Then freeze that verse when we see dollar signs (See dollar signs, see dollar signs)
You lookin’ like a easy come-up, ya bish (Ya bish, ya bish)
A silver spoon, I know you come from, ya bish (Ya bish, ya bish)
And that’s a lifestyle that we never knew (We never knew, we never knew)
Go at a reverend for the revenue

Chorus: Kendrick Lamar & Anna Wise
It go Halle Berry or hallelujah
Pick your poison, tell me what you doin’
Everybody gon’ respect the shooter
But the one in front of the gun lives forever
(The one in front of the gun, forever)
And I been hustlin’ all-day
This-a-way, that-a-way
Through canals and alleyways, just to say
Money trees is the perfect place for shade
And that’s jus how I feel
[Post-Chorus: Kendrick Lamar & Anna Wise]
Nah, nah
A dollar might just fuck your main bitch
That’s jus’ how I feel, nah
A dollar might say fuck them niggas that you came with
That’s jus’ how I feel, nah, nah
A dollar might just make that lane switch
That’s jus’ how I feel, nah
A dollar might turn to a million and we all rich
That’s jus’ how I feel

Verse 2: Kendrick Lamar
Dreams of livin’ life like rappers do (Like rappers do, like rappers do)
Bump that new E-40 after school (Way after school, way after school)
You know, “Big Ballin’ With My Homies” (My homies)
Earl Stevens had us thinkin’ rational (Thinkin’ rational, that’s rational)
Back to reality, we poor, ya bish (Ya bish, ya bish)
Another casualty at war, ya bish (Ya bish, ya bish)
Two bullets in my Uncle Tony head (My Tony head, my Tony head)
He said one day I’ll be on tour, ya bish (Ya bish, ya bish)
That Louis Burgers never be the same (Won’t be the same, won’t be the same)
A Louis belt that never ease that pain (Won’t ease that pain, won’t ease that pain)
But I’ma purchase when that day is jerkin’ (That day is jerkin’, that day is jerkin’)
Pull off at Church’s, with Pirellis skirtin’ (Pirellis skirtin’, Pirellis skirtin’)
Gang signs out the window, ya bish (Ya bish, ya bish)
Hopin’ all of ’em offend you, ya bish (Ya bish, ya bish)
They say your hood is a pot o’ gold (A pot o’ gold, a pot o’ gold)
And we gon’ crash it when nobody’s home

Chorus: Kendrick Lamar & Anna Wise
It go Halle Berry or hallelujah
Pick your poison, tell me what you doin’
Everybody gon’ respect the shooter
But the one in front of the gun lives forever
(The one in front of the gun, forever)
And I been hustlin’ all-day
This-a-way, that-a-way
Through canals and alleyways, just to say
Money trees is the perfect place for shade
And that’s jus’ how I feel

Post-Chorus: Kendrick Lamar & Anna Wise
Nah, nah
A dollar might just fuck your main bitch
That’s jus’ how I feel, nah
A dollar might say fuck them niggas that you came with
That’s jus’ how I feel, nah, nah
A dollar might just make that lane switch
That’s jus’ how I feel, nah
A dollar might turn to a million and we all rich
That’s jus’ how I feel

Bridge: Anna Wise
Be the last one out to get this dough? No way!
Love one of you bucket headed hoes? No way!
Hit the streets, then we break the code? No way!
Hit the brakes when they on patrol? No way!
Be the last one out to get this dough? No way!
Love one of you bucket headed hoes? No way!
Hit the streets, then we break the code? No way!
Hit the brakes when they on patrol? No way!

Verse 3: Jay Rock
‘Magine Rock up in them projects where them niggas pick your pockets
Santa Claus don’t miss them stockings;liquors spillin’, pistols poppin’
Bakin’ soda YOLA whippin’, ain’t no turkey on Thanksgivin’
My homeboy just dome’d a nigga, I just hope the Lord forgive him
Pots with cocaine residue, every day I’m hustlin’
What else is a thug to do when you eatin’ cheese from the government?
Gotta provide for my daughter n’em—get the fuck up out my way, bish!
Got that drum and I got them bands just like a parade, bish!
Drop that work up in the bushes, hope them boys don’t see my stash
If they do, tell the truth, this the last time you might see my ass
From the gardens where the grass ain’t cut, them serpents lurkin’, Blood
Bitches sellin’ pussy, niggas sellin’ drugs but it’s all good
Broken promises, steal your watch and tell you what time it is
Take your J’s and tell you to kick it where a Foot Locker is
In the streets with a heater under my Dungarees
Dreams of me gettin’ shaded under a money tree

Skit: Paula Duckworth & Kenneth Duckworth
Kendrick, just bring my car back, man. I-I called in for another appointment. I figured you weren’t gonna be back here on time anyway. Look, shit, shit, I just wanna get out the house, man. This man is on one. He feelin’ good as a motherfucker. Shit, I’m tryna get my thing goin’, too. I’m going to Merlin’ house. Just bring my car back. Shit, he faded. He feelin’ good. Look, listen to him!
Girl, girl, I want your body, I want your body, ’cause you got a big ol’ fat ass. Girl, girl, I want your body, I want your body, ’cause of that big ol’ fat ass. Girl, I want your body, ’cause of that big ol’—
See, he high as hell. Shit, and he ain’t even trippin’ off them dominoes no more. Just bring the car back!
Did somebody say dominoes?