The Making of a Rap Tribute to the Galleon Group

What rhymes with Raj Rajaratnam?

In 2000, Turney Duff was a trader at the Galleon Group, a now-defunct hedge fund. The firm was riding high - these were the days before Mr. Rajaratnam, its founder, was convicted of insider trading.

Mr. Rajaratnam, as Mr. Duff tells it, wanted to celebrate Galleon’s success - in song. So he commissioned one from Jesse Jaymes, a rapper who had written “Go NY Go,” the Knicks’ catchy signature tune, and won an Emmy for writing “I Love This Game” for the National Basketball Association.

Mr. Duff, or Cleveland D., if you go by his rap name, was a fan of rap music, and had even formed a rap group in 1988 called Maximum Intensity. So he was pretty excited when Mr. Jaymes asked him to help with Galleon’s song.

“’Really?!’ I say, in a voice that is embarrassingly high-pitched,” Mr. Duff recounted in an excerpt from his book, “The Buy Side,” posted to his blog on Thurday. “But I follow up with a very manly, ‘Sure, love to.’”

What came of the meeting was a takeoff on Shirley Temple’s “The Good Ship Lollipop,” but way weirder. Some of the more notable lines include “It’s the good ship Galleon, when Wall Street has a rally on” and “When the market flopped, they knew it would dip, that’s why we call ‘em ‘The Good Ship.’” (A somewhat unfortunate lyric, in hindsight.)

In honor of Shirley Temple Black, who died on Monday at the age of 85, Mr. Duff posted the song to his site, where you can also read the full back story.