You might hear this and think, “Wow, for a song that’s labelled Kelis ft. André 3000, there’s for sure a lot more of the latter on here than the former.” Well, ‘Millionaire’ was supposedly intended to be included on the ‘Love Below’ half of OutKast’s double album in 2003. So that would provide your answer. For some reason, that didn’t happen. As a result, it was included on Kelis’s Tasty album instead. Now, I thought this song was a worldwide hit. But it turns out that it wasn’t even released as a single in the US, so there’s a possibility that a lot of people don’t even know this track exists. This needs to change.

This song was out when I was a dumb nine-year-old. And like a dumb nine-year-old, I wasn’t listening to these song’s lyrics and what was really going on in them. I just knew that the beat was bangin’, André 3000 sounded as smooth as he did on ‘Hey Ya!’ and ‘Roses’ – which had been out as singles for only a year at the time of the release of ‘Millionaire’ – and Kelis sounded just as great too. She was doing her thing too with the success of ‘Milkshake’ and ‘Trick Me’ around this time. And yeah, the song sounded good. But it’s actually very sad. Basically does the same trick as ‘Hey Ya!’, detailing these sad events in the lyrics which you would hardly think about ’cause you want to dance so much. You can’t really dance to ‘Millionaire’ though, which is probably why the lyrics stick out a bit more.

It’s a big ol’ case of being lonely at the top. It’s all in there in the first line of Dré’s verse, to be honest, and the depression is piled on from there. He feels like a lowlife despite having all this money. He wakes up early in the morning, but still can’t find happiness in the sun’s rays. Kelis is losing her friends and feeling like she’s losing her direction in life. Being rich isn’t all it’s hyped to be. And all of this misery is backed by this stomping beat, soothing synthesizers, and that ringing alarm clock-like melody that plays throughout. It’s conflicting. I could listen to this one anytime though. It’s a big nostalgia wave, but one that still gets to me in the present time too.