Found Money: Finding a Way

Deucestacks, 2023

There is a particular kind of confidence that exists before everything has been figured out.

It is not the confidence of someone standing at the end of the journey, looking backward with the benefit of perspective. It is the confidence required when you are still inside it—when ambition is bigger than resources, when instinct has to substitute for certainty, and when the distance between where you are and where you believe you belong is measured mostly by how willing you are to keep moving.

That is the Deucestacks we meet on Found Money.

Released in 2023, Found Money is loose where later Deucestacks records would become deliberate, impulsive where they would become introspective, and communal where they would eventually become deeply interior. It is filled with weed smoke, women, jokes, threats, money, art, friends, cultural references, competition and the absolute conviction that something bigger is coming.

But underneath all that movement is a quieter story.

A man is learning to recognize what he has.

And more importantly, what he can do with it.

Because found money is never really free.

You still have to notice it.

You still have to pick it up.

LOOK DOWN

The album begins with something returning.

On “Boomerrang,” love behaves like an object thrown into the distance:

“Let me go, I’m coming back…”

But Deucestacks complicates the image almost immediately. He is not only a boomerang. He is also a yo-yo—something capable of leaving, but still connected by a string.

The difference is subtle.

A boomerang returns because of the way it was thrown.

A yo-yo returns because somebody is holding the other end.

That distinction introduces one of Found Money’s recurring questions:

What keeps us connected to the things we leave?

The song does not answer it. It barely stops long enough to ask.

Instead:

“Show me what your soul knows.”

It is an unexpectedly vulnerable opening for an album that will spend much of its runtime talking shit.

Before the money.

Before the competition.

Before the flexing.

Deucestacks asks for proof of something deeper than appearance.

Then he starts running.

RUN

“I suggest you run.”

Siren Elyse's warning hangs over “Run” while Deucestacks and TFC turn the record into a declaration of tribe.

The world becomes divided quickly.

There is the squad.

And there is everybody else.

There are people who belong at the table and people who cannot sit with them. There is loyalty and disloyalty. Authenticity and performance. Friends and competitors.

But buried beneath Deucestacks' aggression is an explanation:

“Only the squad love me.”

Suddenly the gatekeeping sounds less like arrogance and more like protection.

Trust is expensive.

And experience has taught him to keep the circle small.

Perhaps the most revealing line arrives almost casually:

“I can’t remember pretty
But I memorize ugly.”

That is Found Money in miniature.

The ugly sticks.

The difficult experiences leave better fingerprints than the beautiful ones.

Yet the album is not interested in sitting down and dissecting those memories. Not yet.

Instead, Deucestacks does what this version of himself repeatedly does:

He converts them into momentum.

TFC provides the perfect companion thought:

“We’ll orchestrate disasters,
turn our plights into symphonies.”

Take what happened.

Make something out of it.

Keep going.

LOOK AT ME NOW

On “Another Groove,” Richard Wright announces:

“Look at me now.”

And suddenly the movement has a destination:

visibility.

Richard talks about taking chances without label advances, potentially leaving to do things independently, needing a new canvas.

That canvas becomes important.

Because Found Money repeatedly describes life as something that can be made.

Painted.

Written.

Performed.

Reframed.

Deucestacks enters with an equally revealing declaration:

“Not predictable, premeditated.”

That contradiction captures much of the album.

The music feels spontaneous.

The ambition isn't.

Then comes:

“I made a plan
Plugged my roots a power plant…”

Roots become infrastructure.

Origin becomes energy.

The things underneath him are not merely history. They are capable of generating power.

And now “Look at me now” means something different.

It isn't merely notice me.

It is:

Look what I managed to become with what I had.

HIGHER

Once you've been seen, there is only one direction left.

Up.

On “Higher,” TFC and Siren Elyse return as Deucestacks declares:

“I’m ascending to a god
What’s higher than that?”

It is absurd.

It is funny.

It is arrogant.

And it is exactly right for Found Money.

The record does not apologize for its confidence.

Nor should it.

There is pleasure here for pleasure's sake. Weed. Sex. Competition. Athletic metaphors. Rap as cardio.

But buried inside the bravado is another small truth:

“I promise to take you high
because you get so low.”

The high only means something because the low exists.

That idea will become increasingly important as the record continues.

Found Money celebrates elevation without pretending gravity disappeared.

THE PICTURE

Then the album slows down just enough to become suspicious.

On “Paint & Sip,” the central question changes from Where are we going? to:

Who are you really?

“If you are who you say you are
If you everything you claim to be…”

The canvas from “Another Groove” returns, but its meaning changes.

There, the canvas represented possibility.

Here, it represents presentation.

People paint pictures of themselves.

Sometimes those pictures are real.

Sometimes they are constructed because someone wants something.

And sometimes the person accusing someone else of painting a false picture realizes he has withheld parts of his own.

“Nah I should be honest
And tell you who I was before.”

That is the crack in the armor.

Deucestacks does not fully climb inside it. He doesn't spend the rest of the record investigating why he hides, why he distrusts, or what intimacy requires of him.

Those questions will belong to another era.

Here, he notices the contradiction and keeps moving.

But the image has already changed.

“Tears spread upon my canvas.”

Reality has gotten into the painting.

And once it does, the picture can never look exactly the same.

BALANCE

If “Paint & Sip” momentarily interrogates the image, “Troy Mix” reminds us that Deucestacks is still a rapper first.

The opening line practically explains the entire performance:

“I bungee off of balance beams…”

And that is precisely what follows.

Banksy.

Warhol.

Rakim.

Big Sean.

Outkast.

Slick Rick.

Beckham.

Stevie Wonder.

Deebo.

Chris Tucker.

Fine art, rap, sports, fashion, movies, sex, hunger, poverty and comedy coexist without hierarchy.

Deucestacks calls himself a gymnast because the verse itself is gymnastics.

But beneath the reference-heavy performance, the album's recurring ideas continue surfacing.

“Looks are a deceiver…”

And then:

“Seeing is grieving
And hearing is believing
So baby turn the music…”

Don't just look.

Listen.

That matters because Found Money is becoming increasingly concerned with perception.

Show me.

Look at me.

Depict me.

Paint me.

Frame me.

See me.

And then, near the end of “Troy Mix,” comes an image that feels almost too perfect for an album with this title:

“Eyes to the ground…”

That is where you find money.

You can spend your entire life looking toward the sky and miss what is sitting directly in front of you.

ALIVE

Then comes “Vibes.”

Procity Bloc establishes the flex immediately—money, speed, women, status, the throne.

But Deucestacks opens his verse somewhere darker:

“Dead before 25, I know
you mad I’m still alive.”

Suddenly survival itself becomes part of the flex.

He is not merely celebrating where he is.

He is celebrating that he is.

That distinction becomes even more important when he later admits:

“Lost my mind, never found.
Lost my heart, it’s vacant now.”

For the first time, the title's language begins appearing in reverse.

Things have been lost.

And money cannot necessarily retrieve them.

Then, almost as quickly as the vulnerability appears, Deucestacks puts the armor back on:

“I’m finally perfect.”

Of course he isn't.

That's what makes the declaration work.

It is boast, joke, defense and acceptance simultaneously.

Maybe perfection here does not mean becoming flawless.

Maybe it means finally being willing to enjoy the person standing there—contradictions included.

THE MOVEMENT

Then “Vibes 2” provides what may be the clearest description of the album itself.

The hook, written by Deucestacks and sung by Cleopatra Moor, begins:

“Started as a movement
turned into a vibe.”

That is more than a catchy phrase.

It is architecture.

Movement creates energy.

Energy attracts people.

People create culture.

And suddenly something exists that no single person could manufacture alone.

The hook continues:

“Crowd saying my name, I
thank God that I’m alive.”

One song earlier:

I'm still alive.

Now:

Thank God I'm alive.

Survival becomes gratitude.

Cleopatra Moor deepens that perspective, bringing family, spirituality, hunger and purpose into the record. She dreams about Grammys not only for herself, but for her family. She feels the hunger of the hood in her own belly. She thanks the Most High for what she has been given.

And then Deucestacks enters with perhaps the album's clearest distinction between price and value:

“Soul not for purchase.
Vibes got it in surplus.”

Purchase.

Surplus.

Economic language describing things that cannot truly be bought.

Then comes an important piece of autobiography:

“Prior to speaking art
I was jugging, eager to law bend.”

The hunger existed before the music.

So did the ingenuity.

So did the risk-taking.

So did the instinct to make something happen.

Art did not create those qualities.

Art gave them somewhere else to go.

That may be one of Found Money's deepest ideas.

Sometimes what you find isn't a new gift.

Sometimes you find a better use for the gift you already had.

NO COMING BACK

The album began with:

“Let me go, I’m coming back…”

By “Catch Me,” that possibility has disappeared.

“You leaving, there’s no coming back.”

The boomerang has stopped returning.

And the narrator who once existed on somebody else's string now declares:

“You in the past, I’m free at last.”

That is progression.

Movement has become liberation.

Deucestacks' verse makes his philosophy explicit:

“Only forward…”

Past, present and future are treated almost like physical locations.

The past is somewhere you can leave.

The present belongs to you.

The future looks beautiful.

And Brucie understands the assignment perfectly.

His verse runs.

No backwards.

No stagnation.

No waiting.

“A moving target is hard to capture.”

Then:

“Can’t let nobody write
my last chapter.”

There is the art metaphor again.

Canvas.

Painting.

Framing.

Speaking art.

And now:

authorship.

Don't paint me.

Don't depict me.

Don't write my ending.

I'll do it myself.

SWING

By “Swing,” motion no longer needs a destination.

It can simply feel good.

Adellea fills the record with California, weed, money, sexuality, humor and free-associative imagery until everything collapses into a single command:

Swing.

Then Deucestacks opens:

“Like pendulums…”

And suddenly another pattern becomes visible.

Found Money has not only been moving forward.

It has been moving back and forth.

The boomerang.

The yo-yo.

Balance beams.

Bobbing and weaving.

Pendulums.

Swinging.

The album is less obsessed with arriving somewhere than it is with avoiding stillness.

That matters.

Because stagnation might be the real enemy of Found Money.

Even pleasure becomes another form of motion.

Not every experience has to be converted into trauma, lesson or revelation.

Sometimes the value is simply:

You were there.
You felt it.
You lived.

FOUND A WAY

And then we reach “Stepbrothers.”

It would be easy for the final record to deliver some grand conclusion.

It doesn't.

Spaceboifresh is still grinding.

Still needing overtime.

Still running checks.

Still running cash.

Still moving.

Then Deucestacks says:

“What I lost, they never found.
Found a way to stay around…”

And there is the album.

Not:

I found everything I lost.

Not:

Everything worked out.

Not:

I finally have all the answers.

Something much more useful:

I found a way.

That distinction changes the meaning of Found Money.

Some things remain gone.

Some wounds remain unexplored.

Some relationships remain complicated.

Some ambitions remain unrealized.

But Deucestacks is still here.

Still creating.

Still moving.

Still betting on himself.

And he wants more:

“Good and all, but I’d rather be
great and enshrined in halls.”

He follows that declaration by naming pieces of his musical vocabulary—So Far Gone, Thank Me Later, Yeezus, Stankonia, Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik, Ghetto Fabolous, Food & Liquor.

These aren't merely records he heard.

They are pieces of cultural currency he collected.

Just as “Troy Mix” moves freely through art, sports, film and music, “Stepbrothers” reveals an artist who has been picking things up his entire life.

Sounds.

References.

Lessons.

Losses.

Language.

Influences.

People.

Experiences.

Everything becomes usable.

Everything might contain value.

Then the album's final thought returns to the thing driving so much of it:

“Once took a loss.
I didn’t like this shit
’cause the taste was different.”

Found Money does not end with victory.

It ends with hunger.

WHAT YOU FIND

In retrospect, Found Money feels less like an album about money than an album about value.

And those are not the same thing.

Money is only one thing Deucestacks is trying to accumulate.

He is accumulating experiences.

Collaborators.

Confidence.

References.

Stories.

Women.

Mistakes.

Momentum.

Perspective.

Proof.

The guest list itself becomes part of the argument. TFC, Siren Elyse, Richard Wright, Procity Bloc, Cleopatra Moor, Brucie, Adellea and Spaceboifresh do not merely decorate the album. They help create its world.

Because Found Money is communal.

It sounds like people making something with what is available to them.

And perhaps that is why the title fits so well.

Found money is value discovered unexpectedly.

But discovery requires attention.

Two people can walk past the same thing.

One sees nothing.

The other recognizes an opportunity.

Which explains why Found Money spends so much time talking about sight.

Show me what your soul knows.

Look at me now.

They depict me as fiction.

Paint the picture.

Looks deceive.

Eyes to the ground.

Again and again, the album asks:

What do you see?

Because you cannot recognize value if you aren't paying attention.

And once you recognize it?

Move.

BEFORE THE RITES

Listening to Found Money from the other side of Deucestacks' later work makes its place in the catalog particularly interesting.

The temptation would be to retroactively make it more philosophical than it was.

That would miss what makes it special.

The Deucestacks of Found Money isn't yet trying to understand everything that happened to him.

He is trying to do something with it.

Later work would increasingly turn inward—toward reflection, creation, inheritance, relationships, family, accountability and the meaning buried inside experience.

Found Money catches an earlier stage.

Before the examination comes motion.

Before the philosophy comes instinct.

Before asking what everything means, there is the realization that everything might be useful.

The ugly memories.

The ambition.

The jokes.

The lust.

The friendships.

The mistakes.

The influences.

The hunger.

The losses.

The gift.

Nothing has to be wasted.

That doesn't mean everything is healed.

It means everything is material.

And in 2023, Deucestacks wasn't standing still long enough to give that process a name.

He was too busy doing it.

He said it himself:

“Started as a movement
turned into a vibe.”

And maybe that's exactly what Found Money was.

A movement before the map.

A philosophy before the language.

An artist discovering that the things necessary to become himself might already be in his possession.

Not everything lost was recovered.

Not every question was answered.

He simply:

“Found a way to stay around.”

Sometimes that's the first fortune.

Sometimes that's the money you find.

And sometimes finding a way is enough to change everything that comes after.