Lil Wayne – the 30 year old rapper.
This is probably the guy women would rather not go on a blind date with.
Unless he’s already famous. Wannabe is never a good term
Wanna be doing a degree or getting a day job is slightly more encouraging.
But there’s probably nothing less attractive than the kind of man Lil Wayne represents.
He was a great accessory on soldier by Destiny’s Child and some of his appearances on other tracks have definitely added a quirky thug element to those tunes.
But on his own debut ‘Lollipop’ the hollowness that is Lil Wayne becomes all too apparent. Barely audible amidst the bleeped out cuss words, Lil Wayne talks about how a girl begs to be licked like a lollipop or ‘yawn’ is it the other way around. We’re driving through – where? LA? Las Vegas, in a massive stretch Hummer full of pretty scantily clad girls and Lil Wayne is oh, on top of the Cadillac sucking a lollipop . I’d expect this of Lil Bow Wow, not a rapper who has been waiting in the wings to blow for the last decade.
Sigh. What do I know about music? Well, I would be the first to agree that my mental back catalogue is hardly exhaustive but while I might appreciate your genius references to former masters of the art or nods to current affairs (there weren’t any), your clever sampling (beats are admittedly awesome) and oh what a good rift. I’m more concerned with what is it for? The chips are stacking up but where are they going?
This is the point Fat Joe misses when he claims he is the elephant in the room of hip hop, the guy who sells all the records, gets the summer banger but no awards. Well – its cos, once the noise is turned down, what was it Fat Joe, the sum of your various parts – Lean Back, New York, I won’t tell, it was nothing. A void, a vacuum, because like one night stand sex – you leave no lasting memory.
But back to Lil Wayne. I was expecting more of you. Fiddy, might be churning empty bangers now but his first commercially successful album, however dark and anti-Christ in Spirit, brought it home. He reminded us what hip hop was supposed to be about. Not gurning on the top of Cadillac with a lollipop in your mouth – but it was supposed to be heavyset and macho and fucking - like ‘these are the days of our lives’ in epic storytelling scale. Excuse me as I recall, NWA, Nas, Easy-E, Jay Z, Biggie Smalls, Tu Pac (may he live forever), Public Enemy.
If this is your debut, can we expect the rest of your album to represent anything more than the soggy thong of the girl you slept with after your video shoot was over?
Answers on a postcard please?
Wednesday, 30 April 2008
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)