He smoked two blunts, asked for a cup of hot tea and just went in.

Amazing. Rhapsody article talking to the producers about each song on Tha Carter III.  Snippet below from D. Smith talking about “Shoot Me Down”.

So I went in the room and saw him and the first thing he said to me was, “Thank you.” He hadn’t even heard the beat yet. So I played the beat and it was probably like 15 people in the room. He heard the beat and kicked everybody out except for like two people, the engineer, and myself. He smoked two blunts, asked for a cup of hot tea and just went in.