Credit: Alamy

Over the course of the 2000s, Lil Wayne positioned himself as one the biggest rappers on the planet through Birdman’s Cash Money imprint. After a decade in the spotlight, Weezy had a change of heart and decided to switch his style from Hip Hop to rap rock.

Just two years after releasing his acclaimed Tha Carter III album, Wayne returned a whole new approach to music with Rebirth, his 2010 rock music debut. The project included features from Eminem and Nicki Minaj on the songs ‘Drop the World’ and ‘Knockout’, debuting at number two on the Billboard 200 chart with 176,000 copies.

Despite its chart success in the first week, Rebirth received a ton of negative reviews from critics. Not one to listen to outside noise, Wayne would tell you the album is home to one of his favourite songs. ‘On Fire’, which samples Amy Holland’s ‘She’s on Fire’ from Giorgio Moroder’s 1983 Scarface soundtrack, has everything when it comes to Wayne injecting his talents into a record. We’re talking rapping, singing and playing the guitar.

“If you speak to Wayne, Wayne will tell you the reason why he loves the record is he gets to do everything on the record,” Dre, half of the prolific production duo Cool & Dre, told MTV News. “He gets to spit on the record, he gets to sing on the record, he gets to play the guitar on the record.

The idea for ‘On Fire’ came about after Dre watched Scarface and had one of the songs stuck in his head the following day. Together with his production partner, Dre redid the whole beat with new drums that worked around the vocal sample. What they didn’t foresee is Wayne coming in with the guitar.

“One night I was watching Scarface, and I woke up in the morning, had the damn ‘She’s on Fire’ in my head. I called up Cool, like, ‘Yo, we gotta flip this.'” he said. “The way the sample was, you couldn’t flip it. It’s like a disco song, but you hear the guitars. I was like, ‘We should put this shit on steroids and turn it all the way up. Throw some 808s on it and really crank this shit up.’

“We redid the whole beat and kept the ‘she’s on fire’ [vocal sample]. We gave it to Wayne. Wayne is the Fireman, so it’s perfect. But we heard it after he did it – we didn’t know he was gonna kill the guitar like he did.”

Cool & Dre may be listed as the production duo behind ‘On Fire,’ but it’s never as straight forward as that when the two parties collaborate. Dre opened up about making beats with Wayne in mind and how he uses his voice as an instrument.

“It’s never us producing a beat for Wayne. It’s a collaboration. It’s always a collaboration,” he said. “It’s not like, ‘OK, make a beat.’ We’re making the music with him in mind and the shit he does, [thinking,] ‘He’ll probably rap; make the music change here.'”

He continued, “When we gave him the Pro Tools, he goes in and he amplifies the beat. That song has drops all over it where hits the guitar. Music is so fucking boring right now. It’s good to wake muthafuckas up. Wayne sings on it, he spits on it, and he plays the guitar on it. He gives you everything on one record where his mind is at right now.”