This is Lil Wayne, for those of you who don't know.
I have to admit, I liked Lil Wayne… when I was twelve… on "Back That Azz Up" by Juvenile.
I had to be twelve and listen a verse that consisted of less lines than a Ramone's song to even like Lil Wayne a little bit.
Then I grew up.
Somehow, Lil Wayne still goes triple platinum (with Carter II) even though all the tracks have the same substance and depth as The Block Is Hot. Herein lies the problem: people listen to hip-hop, but no one remembers hip-hop.
No one in the rock world could get away with singing "Well I stand up next to a mountain/And I chopped it down with the edge of my hand" which is from Jimi Hendrix's song "Voodoo Chile (Slight Return)" which was from 1968. But, by the same token, City High stole the beat to "The Next Episode" by Dr. Dre, (which was released in 2000) and used it on "What Would You Do" (released in 2001). No one seemed to notice.
But I digress… and return to my point that Lil Wayne is one of the worst rappers of all time!
For those of you that don't know, Lil Wayne
(a.k.a. Weezy a.k.a. Young Money a.k.a. Birdman Jr. a.k.a. Raw Tunes a.k.a. Fireman) is the self-proclaimed "greatest rapper of all time".
Truth is, he's probably delusional and delirious because he's surrounded by either people that treat him like he's second in the Special Olympics...
"It's okay, Wayne. The Birdman's here, with my pimped out Gucci suit. I still think you're the greatest rapper ever."
...or people dumber than him....
...I wouldn't doubt either.
Now, I know a lot of people LOOOOOOOOOVE Lil Wayne for reasons that escape me, (again, he did go triple platinum), so I'll present to you, the tale of the tape. I made it easily digestible for all you illiterate, Lil-Wayne-listenin' motherfuckers.
I thought to myself, what's important for a rapper to have? Well, let me be more specific, what's important for a dirty south, gangsta rapper to have? I broke it down into four categories.
First, he's gotta have street credibility. Arrest records, shootings, gang affiliations, we want it all. Street credibility shows that a rapper not only "talks the talk" but "walks the walk" as well.
Second, he's gotta have lyrics. To claim the throne of "the greatest rapper of all time" he needs to have varied subject matter, (whether relating to the gritty streets of New Orleans or not is Wayne's choice), a good sound with his words, and plenty of words at that, (so we don't get bored with him saying "turn me up in my headphones" or "I can't hear my snare" over and over).
Third, flow. Plain and simple. He's gotta be able to make it seamless when he wants to, and jarring when he wants to, but hold the same presence the entire time. A lot of this can stem from the words he chooses, but some of it is just emphasis and style. This and the next point are the hardest to factually dispute, as much of it is opinion, but we all know certain things about flow, like the fact that Snoop can make anything flow. Imagine him saying "don't eat that carrot, it has lateral root dieback disease"... see? Still flows nicely.
For our final point, we're going to look at beats. I know that Lil Wayne has very little to do with the creation of the beats, but he still has to choose these beats. As little as it has to do with actual rapping skill, a rapper still has to know what beat is right for what song. Imagine "Put Your Hands Where My Eyes Could See" by Busta Rhymes put with Chubby Checker's "The Twist"... horrifying.
Street Credibility
- He shot himself. I know, I know... on "Know What I'm Doin'" he said the words "'Till the day I got shot they found money in my pocket". But the fact is that he accidentally shot himself in the chest when he was twelve. Then he got a tattoo to commemorate it, (look for the "Bang Bang" on his chest). If, by the time you're twelve, you don't know that the barrel of a gun faces out chances are you're not a gangster, and never will be.
- "Snitch" The gun he shot himself with was an unregistered handgun which belonged to his step-father. Because of Lil Wayne's mouth, his step-father landed in jail for 6 months. This clearly contradicts what he said on the song "Snitch" from Tha Carter, ("ain't no snitches ridin' with us").
- Kissing men. As little of a problem as I have with homosexuality, I'm going to be blunt, the rap world is very homophobic... especially the gangsta rap world. And the shit with Lil Wayne and Birdman sharing an awkwardly romantic-looking kiss doesn't fly to well for his gangsta image.
I think the funniest part of this picture is the disgusted-looking fellow in the background.
Lyrics
- One thing that is necessary to keep an audience entertained is varied subject matter. Now, whether you rap under a blanket subject, (like politics, life on the streets, etc.), there are still a multitude of things that can be said underneath each category. Since Lil Wayne's biggest topic seems to be life on the streets, it seems to be necessary to dissect what he talks about regarding the streets.
I decided to do an experiment, and since every one needs a control I decided I would compare his lyrics to another rapper's. I was going to use Sage Francis, (my personal favorite rapper)...
"My pedestal was too tall to climb off/In fact, that's the reason for the high horse"
...but I figured that would be cruel to Sage and Wayne. So, I present to you: "Macho Man" Randy Savage!
Yes, he made a rap album.
So I present to you…
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Lil Wayne | Versus | Randy Savage |
Number of songs selected: 17 | Number of songs selected: 9 | |
Total number of topics: 5 | Total number of topics: 6 | |
Percent of songs most-used topic mentioned: A tie for 76.5% | Percent of songs most-used topic mentioned: Three way tie for 33% | |
Mentioned own name: 55 times (every 1:17) | Mentioned own name: 47 times (every 0:33) |
Winner: "Macho Man" Randy Savage!
- "Rhyming scorecard"
I had so much fun with scoring the epic "Macho Man" Randy Savage versus Lil Wayne bout, that I felt I should make a Rhyming Scorecard.
Here's how it works: since rap is based a lot around rhyme scheme, I decided to figure out how well Wayne's rhymes were. I broke it down into three sections: rhymes within a line, multi-syllabic rhyming, and same-word rhymes.
Rhymes within a line are simply that. If I have a line like, "Agony in her body" (to take a Sage Francis title) that would be one point, because it's a rhyme within the same line.
For multi-syllabic rhyming, I made it a little easier for Lil Wayne to get points. For someone like Rakim, I would have made it so that there would have need to have been two or more words with two or more syllables that rhyme. For example, "tyrannosaurus", "chorus", and "Taurus" all have two syllables that rhyme, the "r" sound and the "us" sound. For Lil Wayne, though, I made it so that if he rhymed any word with a word that happened to have more than one syllable, he'd get a point.
Same word rhyming is BAD! Every time this occurred, I took away a point. For Lil Wayne, I made it easier. If he did it at the end of a rhyme, I counted it. Other than that, no harm, no foul.
To make it even EASIER for him, I counted a multi-syllabic rhyme that happened in the middle of the line twice. So, two points for that shit.
Anyway, out of all seventeen songs, he had forty-one inner-line rhymes, eighty-nine words that rhymed with a multi-syllabic word, and ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY SIX times where he rhymed the same word. This gave him a total score of...
... -46.
Negative forty-six on his rhyme style. In fact, he rhymed the same word more than "Macho Man" Randy Savage said his own name... every 24 seconds on average.
All in all, we may not get bored with him saying "turn me up in my headphones" over and over again, because he doesn't seem to say enough words.
Dave "Fisticuffs" Chappelle: The Only Rapper Who Can Say "turn my headphones up" and be entertaining.
Possibly the most disturbing thing is that Lil Wayne doesn't even rhyme different words with themselves, (like doing "unpredictable" with itself, than "abracadabra" with itself). He tends to have favorite words to rhyme over and over with itself. There were four words that he did that with over ten times, ("up", "boy", "them" and "back")!
Flow
Lil Wayne flows like a miscarriage: long, drawn-out, and messy.
For instance "Weezy Baby" has probably the messiest flow out of any Lil Wayne song, (and that's saying a lot). One particular instance is where he tries to flow fast, but comes out with a nonsensical phrase that putters across the finish line like a Ford Pinto at the Indie 500.
Hell, let's study Lil Wayne's "fast" flow. "Oh, Nancy the flow's plastic, automatic" are the lyrics... just F.Y.I., they're fucking meaningless. He's got a two second flow consisting of six words. Three words per second... oh boy.
This is where I'll break out the Sage Francis, I suppose.
On the song "Escape Artist" Sage pulls out an impressive flow for the chorus which goes, "In an effort to make 'em all see what I found in my life I decided to give 'em a look/None of them gave it a glimpse, so I guess that I'm sitting in the middle of an unread book/Letters are falling apart but the sentences stand on their own/The wording is permanent/Never been missed/I've just been mis-/worded and mis-/interpreted, it's funny how serving a sentence of solitary confinement/results in a death sentence of my writing assignment/I'm just wondering where my time went/It pulled a disappearing act/and every single assistant I ever had got sawed in half//".
Not only does he pull it all out in 12 seconds it's 110 words! Leaving him at a hefty 9 words per second. What's more is that he starts and stops on beat, unlike Wayne, the shit makes sense, unlike Wayne, and he has some impressive rhyming style in it, unlike Wayne.
Hell, I'll use a relatively slow Mos Def song too: "Sunshine".
I am a fighter and a lover/I'm the freaky baby daddy, I'm a bad motherfucker
Even Mos Def's average flow in this song comes to WPM count of 3.4. It's not even a fast song! So frankly, I'm not impressed with Lil Wayne's attempt at speed.
Lil Wayne is not faster than a speeding bullet... or a Ninja Turtle apparently.
Oh, take the beats out, pretend he's just humming... notice one thing... IT'S ALWAYS THE SAME FLOW! He's like a 2-speed bike. First gear = bad, second gear = simple.
Beats
Listen to the beat from "Shine" and tell me that's not a joke. What'd they take it from Yoshi's Island?
I think that the beats are the high point of any Lil Wayne album, and usually they're only good for a few measures or so, then they get boring... or Wayne's vocals simply ruin them.
Conclusion
Lil Wayne sucks. Still sucks. In fact, he sucks more than I initially thought. Here's a final look at Lil Wayne for you people... I think his facial expressions show his originality.
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This mouth-breather motherfucker is a hip-hop production line defect. I have a perfect home for him.
There's even a pistol on the island, Wayne. Maybe you can learn what the barrel points!
And that concludes our lesson, boys and girls.
"It's okay, Wayne. He's just a hater. You're stuntin' like your daddy, aren't ya, son?"
"Yay! Stuntin' like my daddy! Stuntin like my daddy!"
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