All the Money in the World
One Song One Story
August 2026
Before Sam
August closes with a story about the way one song can hold what a person cannot always say aloud.
After a month of considering home, memory, and becoming, Sam reminds us that sometimes the stories that stay with us arrive through a chorus, a lyric, or the voice of someone we still miss.
Throughout this issue, we've returned to the people, places, and moments that continue shaping us long after they've passed. Sam's story carries those same questions into music, revealing how a single song can become a place where memory lives, grief finds language, and love continues to echo.
It feels fitting that the final human story of August is told this way—not through certainty, but through a song that has never left.
Because sometimes the stories that stay with us are the ones we keep listening to.
“All the Money in the World”
Some songs remind us of a moment.
Others become part of the way we remember it.
For Sam, that song is “All the Money in the World” by Rick Ross.
The song found him during one of the hardest seasons of his life. Around that same time, his father passed away.
“I just wasn't very expressive as a young man,” he says.
Then, early in the song, he heard a lyric that stopped him.
“I’d never rap again if I could tell him that I miss him.”
“For me, that embodied how I felt about my father passing because I felt the same way.”
At the time, Sam thought he was going to become a rapper. Although life ultimately took him in another direction, that lyric stayed with him long after the song ended.
It stayed with him so deeply that it inspired him to write a song of his own titled “I'll Never Rap Again If I Could Tell Him That I Miss Him.”
The opening lines read:
“I'll never rap again if I could tell him that I miss him.
Always expect the unexpected, but didn't expect this one.”
Writing the song became another way to process a loss he had never fully dealt with.
“It was just a very, very introspective line for me,” he says. “Something that I've never really dealt with.”
As the years passed, the meaning of the lyric never faded. Other losses came, but the words continued to resonate.
“The line still stood strong.”
The song carries another layer of significance for him. It features one of his favorite artists, Raphael Saadiq.
“That just put a little ribbon on the package for me.”
More than fifteen years later, “All the Money in the World” is still in his rotation.
Some songs become favorites.
Others become companions.
For Sam, it still comes back to one lyric.
“It still stands true.”
— Sam
“I'd never rap again if I could tell him that I miss him.”
The Record Keeps Spinning.
Every song carries a memory.
Some become the soundtrack.
Others become the story.
One Song • One Story 001