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CS major, not so stellar grades, does getting a math minor help my case in applying for PhDs

hello. please bear with me. this is my current situation: I plan to join a PhD program after I'm done with undergrad, just started 4th year. my current gpa is 3.6. I have published one of my projects in a Q1 journal as a co-author in ML, plan to get my bachelor's thesis/final year project published as well. 

my other research related experience involve working as a Research Assistant in a funded lab for some NLP projects and helping the faculty's new students with their own projects in Pattern Recognition+Neural Nets courses. Haven't really made any meaningful contributions there. Also worked as TA in a few CS courses for 6 months.

so, here's the thing. All of my first year grades were horrible, i couldn't give half a shit about anything, then worked my ass off to get the current gpa. I had picked up a D on a non credit Pre Calc course. And a D+ in a core Discrete Math course (redid and got an A). 

Now, I was never bad at maths but my approach to those two courses were wrong in the first year and i got fucked. The other math courses i completed in the uni curriculum are: calc 1,2,3, (None lower than A-), Stats, Linear Algebra (As), and Engineering Mathematics (A-).

My target phd program is obviously in CS, preferably focused in Intelligence. My university is offering a math minor that includes only three math courses: Real & Complex Analysis, Differential Equations and the other one is probably special topics which changes every semester. 

Should I go for the minor just so it looks good on my SOP/application to prove I'm not a dumbass in maths so that it can cover up my dumbassery reflected on my first year grades? I plan to complete all these within the 4 year benchmark. 

I know I'm dumb and i wrote a lot but please guide me, let me know if I missed anything. My target schools are good to moderately ranked CS programs in the US, preferably within like top 300 or something. not expecting ivy leagues so I'm not delusional.
Thank you.
gpt
Listen. When it comes to PhD admissions, if you have a single publication, no one is going to care about your grades. People are especially not going to care about your first year grades. People are really especially not going to care about your first year grades if you did much better after that.

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PhD admissions are about an ability to do research. The best predictor of being able to do research is having done research.  You have done a bachelor's thesis and gotten a publication. Your grades don't matter that much.

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That said - if you believe that Real Analysis + Diff eqs will help you do research. Take them and say that. Don't take them to prove you are not dumb because you've already done that in the way the admissions committee cares about.