also mike jones was catchy and paul wall’s first album was brilliantly weird. it had a song about the internet, really good production and a track with freeway.

“I ran the streets, check my bio
I started off high with two O’s like Ohio”

[www.pitchforkmedia.com]

is well more than it deserved. Mike Jones makes Rick Ross look like Nas.

That’s supposed to be a clever lyrical turn? I like Lil Wayne just fine, but honestly, my favorite verse of his is the one he dropped on the “Party Like A Rockstar” remix. I think I’ll stick with Lupe, thank you very much.

Though I think the Prince analogy might be pushing it. Needless to say, the Young Money clique is no Morris Day & the Time.

I think you’re right in saying that Lil Wayne is stuck in a position where there is intense love and hate surrounding what he does. Because of who he is and what he does, it just doesn’t seem feasible for there to be a situation where there’s going to be any middle ground. This sticks him in an unfortunate position of intense critical love and intense critical hate, which only serves to increase the hype surrounding him. Weezy’s moved past being just a superstar rapper to being something of mythic proportions, either good or bad.

I am a huge Lil Wayne fan, and I take his weak points along with his strong. I am one of the fans hoping for the classic album, but expecting a flop, and if “Lollipop” and “A Millie” are any indication, I will be unsurprisingly disappointed. “Lollipop” is a fine pop song, but it misses absolutely everything about Wayne that I adore: the wordplay, the clever disrespect for gangsta rap convention, the total absurdism on his own terms. The beat is reminiscent of “This Is Why I’m Hot”, and just makes me long for the opening track on Drought 3. “A Millie” is different stylistically, but ultimately the same: Wayne completely discounts whatever his essence is by trying to play to half-baked gangsta rap stereotypes spun into a lazy Wayne style. I think the fascination with Lil Wayne among the hipster set will be coming to an end pretty soon, and I think it’s important to recall what Wayne did, which is, I think, far more important for rap than anything else.

Crowning himself “the best rapper alive”, and in turn being crowned by the media as such, coinciding with Jay-Z premature retirement and New York rap’s descent into Dipset/G-Unit fiefdom which led to needlessly complex infighting and diminishing returns in quality was the final blow which brought down New York rap hegemony and its aesthetics and made it just another region, something I view as a good thing. Of course, Wayne was preceded by a number of non-New York rappers who all made a claim for the reigning rap heavyweight title (see: Tupac, T.I.), but, as you put it, the timing of Wayne’s ascent made the blow to the idea of rap monoculture that much more effective. By removing one region from the seat of power, it removed a lot of pretension and bloated egoism surrounding rap, and I think makes the mixing of ideas from various regions easier. Secondly, Wayne’s disregard for the language in general and gangsta rap cliche in particular by placing his own brand of weirdness into his style helped rap break out at least a bit from the structures which were beginning to confine it, and his style of cameoing on pretty much everything showed that there could be success to such a style. These are things which make Wayne an important part of rap today, and ultimately will make him an important part of rap history I think. It also makes him wildly inconsistent and unfortunately particularly vulnerable to criticism. It’s a pretty cliched analogy by this point, but he really does bear a lot of similarity to Prince.

Overall good post, it’s been the most interesting part of my day so far.

Plus, there’s this:

“Lil Wayne is taking things in the opposite direction and challenging (maybe unintentionally, in his drugged out haze) the notion that rap needs to be meaningful at all. It’s almost postmodern. And that thematic ambivalence, combined with his unique, almost dylan-esque voice, and along with his playful humor and infectious swagger, makes his music more compelling than traditional rappers like Lupe and Wale (not that they’re not great, too).”

There is nothing postmodern about throwing everything you write on the pad into the booth and seeing what will stick. If you think that there is, then there needs to be another debate over how you would define postmodernism, and that debate is totally unnecessary when talking about Lil’ Wayne.

Critic after critic praises Wayne for this precise reason and it’s verging on laziness. For every mediocre single or throwaway track a critic is willing to go to bat for Weezy with the same ol’ defense: It doesn’t encourage discussion or analysis, you’re just saying “case closed, move along now.” That’s not criticism, let alone journalism.

And, “Dylan-esque voice?” For real? By that logic, Cam’Ron sounds a helluva lot like Pete Seeger. Come on.