Real Money

Real Money is the xth album by Hoosier rapper Ronald Wever, released in 2009. The album debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 and subsequently sold 1,068,200 copies, making it one of the top albums of the year. The album became known for singles "26 Dollars", "Life and Death in Africa" and "15 Minutes (My First Award)", which was a major hit in the fall of 2009, igniting a feud between Wever and rapper Kanye West. Wever had not intended to create 15 Minutes (My First Award), nor really wanted the album to be defined mostly by the track.

15 Minutes (My First Award)
The fallout from the 2009 MTV Video Music Award scandal between Kanye West and Taylor Swift caused significant condemnation by celebrities, including Wever, who tweeted that Kanye had no right to do that, and that his tirade made all musicians there look bad. During the actual ceremony (on 13 September), he tweeted a picture of the incident with the comment "... and now her first award is Kanye West", which would inspire him to create a song on the event.

He recorded it over a couple of weekends, leading to the overall feel being somewhat rough. He created a song to try and bring up Taylor Swift and to lash out at Kanye for his actions. Wever admits it morphed into somewhat of a diss track, which (according to him) "was not what I intended, but felt right to do".

Release
On 21 October, "15 Minutes (My First Award)" was released, and within 24 hours had received just under 13.7 million views, and by the first week received 365,000 digital downloads (as of January 2017 has received 9.7 million downloads).

Real Money was released on 3 December.

"Life and Death in Africa", which had slowly been climbing the tracks, was released as a single on 11 January, much to the surprise of fans.