“Blender” Gives It Up For Lil Wayne Once Again

Is Dwayne Carter the best rapper alive? Anono-Prick cannot say for sure, but he can say that he has sure as hell enjoyed every verse he’s heard out of the sesquidillion Carter has crafted since 2005, not to mention his work as a teenage Hot Boy. He can also say that Carter has had particularly hot hands for the past two years: not only is he the guest spitter of choice for every current R&B and hip-hop figure, but despite the unending, Zappa-esque stream of cuts he’s put up on MySpace, his third album, Tha Carter III sold a million units in its first week on shelves, an achievement associated with a distant epoch.

Lil Wayne also seems to think of himself, above all else, as an artist. Or, in his telling in “Lil Wayne, There is None Higher,” the cover story of the September ’08 Blender, his artistry is compulsive: “It’s a faucet I can’t turn off,” he tells senior editor Jonah Weiner.

Clearly, he’s the answer to Blender‘s prayers. And so it’s very likely that, once Tha Carter III proved to be a blockbuster, Weiner hustled down to Miami to hang out with the perpetually sizzurp- and chronic- guzzling rapper. The trouble is that–and here AP must admit that he’s hung up on possibly anachronistic notions of journalistic ethics and the concept of an “appearance of impropriety” that possibly no longer or never did apply to entertainment publications–this is Blender‘s third major feature regarding Lil Wayne since January.

All of which have been written by Weiner, who is also the author of a four and a half star review of Tha Carter III that appeared in last month’s issue. He’s probably developed a rapport with Wayne, and he sure as hell has made it clear that he thinks the rapper is nigh-unto-messianic, both of which surely come in handy when trying to gain access to one of the busiest artists in popular music.

(AP should mention that Weiner was hired right of out of college a few months after AP began his own doomed year and a half at Blender; AP sat next to Weiner and got along great with him, although watching his star wax while AP’s own waned was frequently frustrating).

It was hardly obvious a few months ago, given the surfeit of Weezy tunes online, that Tha Carter III would have had the success it continues to have at the brick-and-mortar level. So AP doesn’t necessarily begrudge Blender putting Lil Wayne front and center at a time when he’s a genuine pop figure, and not just a hip-hop standard bearer. And Weiner’s piece is quite good, and Blender‘s powers-that-be are to lauded for taking a risk, given the long-standing perception in the publishing field that white readers avoid magazines with African-Americans-that-are-not-Obama on its cover that AP likes to mention every week, etc., etc.

But it probably would have been prudent to send another writer down for the interview: Weiner is certainly not the only Blender scribe capable enough to do the job right. In the unlikely event that Blender continues awarding Wayne minute-by-minute, adulatory coverage in the rest of the year, senior editor Josh Eells or contributor Chris Norris should the get the nod. Otherwise, Blender and Weiner have made their point re: Wayne over and over again.

The other piece of substance in this issue is “R. Kelly: Trapped in the Courtroom,” in which writer Edward McClelland relates the goings-on in the Chicago courtroom that saw Kells get off without a nick. The writer focuses on the fact that the young lady alleged to be the recipient of Kelly’s affections, Reshonda LaFair, has consistently denied that it was she on the tape, which is why the case hinged on the accusation of creating child pornography and not of committing statutory rape. Apparently, LaFair’s family still benefits from Kelly’s largesse: She’s said to still visit his Chicago compound, and her dad has played guitar on several post-2002 Kells albums.

McClelland conveys a key fact of Kelly’s M.O. w/r/t to his amorous habits that AP hadn’t previously considered: Although evidence of his past exploits was inadmissible in court, apparently Kelly has a history of doing as he likes with young girls and is more than willing to throw money–whether settling lawsuits or paying for silence–at anyone who threatens to blow the whistle or otherwise stymie his lifestyle. (AP directs the interested reader to Bill Wyman’s R Kelly Sex Facts, which provides the context that the judge did not allow in court.)

Which brings AP to his corollary point: Chuck Berry has similarly poo- and piss- fixated predilections. In 1959, he was convicted of violating the Mann Act, i.e. bringing a teenage girl across state lines, and jailed for four years. While AP wouldn’t shed a tear if Berry were punished severely for his practice of videotaping women going to the bathroom in one of his restaurants in the St. Louis area, he also wouldn’t begrudge him his astounding, Louis Armstrong-level musical legacy. (Berry was also sentenced to prison for four months for tax evasion in 1979.)

Similarly, R. Kelly is more than likely a creep and sociopath, and AP wouldn’t have been upset if he was convicted. But no matter how much an asshole he might be, AP would never deny that Kells is a fucking great artist. Never mind his effortless way with a tune: “Real Talk” and “Trapped In the Closet” demonstrate a keen sensitivity toward how speech patterns can be rendered musically; “When A Woman’s Fed Up” shows that he can be empathetic in his recordings, if not in his recklessly conducted private life. AP would detail more of Kells’ formal innovations, but he’s probably going on a bit. Let’s just say that if personal conduct is the barometer of whether an artist should be countenanced by people of conscience, then you gotta get rid of every recording from Led Zeppelin, Frank Sinatra, and God knows how many others.

In any case, McClelland’s piece is excellent, particularly in light of how most mainstream media gatekeepers seemed to be discomfited by the case and dimly understood the defendant as an idiot savant who made this bizarre video that their hipster children thought was hilarious. AP wouldn’t be surprised if editor-in-chief Joe Levy missed the kind of deeply reported journalism that his former employer still invests in, and regarded l’affaire Kells as a major story about a major musical figure, and thus chose to give this the consideration it deserves. As it is, Blender‘s September issues tended in the last several years to be devoted to a “hot list,” which is absent from this issue and tends to be produced less expensively than sending a reporter to Chicago for a month. AP would be surprised if Levy’s boss, Kent Brownridge, was keen on more reportage of this sort, but good for Levy if he can get away with it.

Finally, a quick word regarding “Masters of Reality,” this month’s Station to Station column by Rob Sheffield. Sheffield watches Denise Richards: It’s Complicated and Living Lohan and concludes that… the people involved in these are foolish or sociopaths or both. He also makes quippy references to phenomena AP had to look up: “Kim Kardashian, with an ass that looks like the Denali National Park with a blanket thrown over it…”; Dina Lohan would need the Large Hadron Collider to make her seem like a “full-fledged human being.”

We are thus reminded that Sheffield can proffer snark. What we don’t know is what any of the current crop of reality programming tells us about contemporary American society, other than Sheffield likes laughing at–and possibly feels superior to–the participants. Levy is clearly content to let his friend take two pages in the magazine he runs to say that he, like most of his fellow viewers, is amused by these shows, and he will use convey his amusement with verbiage more snide and ornate than “OMFG” and “LOL.” But we never learn from Sheffield what these shows mean.