lil wayne is annoying

after watching diddy, eminem and wayne on SNL, what I wanna understand is the evolution of the mid-rhyme shaky hand gestures.

JAZZ HANDS

I'm still a Wayne enthusiast. Obviously Rebirth was bad, and I Am Not A Human Being was a little uneven and stale, but No Ceilings was some of his best work, and that was released less than a year and a half ago. So it's too soon to write the narrative that he's fallen off. He was just overexposed for a while.

was overexposed? I can be in the car for 30 minutes and have 95% of songs at least feature him. I don't have a problem with this.

i think i also have a personal bias in favor of rappers who leave some kind of unresolved tension between total control & exuberance/energy/interesting weirdnesses/creativity/ ---> basically any kind of energy to balance the kind of dry technique. Wayne of course has 'technique' but he basically just gave up on making it feel like it was in tension w/ his eccentricities & creativity, its like a snapped rubber band or something.

― tuomascratch beat (deej), Thursday, January 27, 2011 12:41 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

speaking of tensions i think i also just liked the way carter 1 has him emerging as a creative force but w/in the nolia rap template, still spitting over mannie fresh beats. carter ii has fallen in my esteem to a degree just cuz he seemed to loosen the tether from his roots (no more mannie beats for ex) & its most obvious when you compare 'go dj' (classic obv) w/ 'fireman' (ehhh)

― tuomascratch beat (deej), Thursday, January 27, 2011 12:48 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

^^i think another way of looking at this is it's a pretty classic "1960s/early 70s" career arc of an artist with drug abuse problems. at first the drugs probably enhance their creativity or at least help them break into new territory, then thing get worse and more muddled as time goes on.

see also: gucci

the carter IV might be wayne's "soft parade"

Drugs take that toll.

and lets be real, what artists that hes influenced is anyone really feeling in 2011? when u look back on wayne's career & impact in the 00s, does it make u excited & thinking about the narrative possibilities of rap or does it just make you ;_;?

― tuomascratch beat (deej), Thursday, January 27, 2011 5:59 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

Lil B, for one.
I've never been a Wayne enthusiast, but I can't imagine Gucci, Nicki, Wacka, etc. getting big w/o him, which is certainly a direction in rap I prefer to countless JZ acolytes.

I thought No Ceilings was pretty great? No Drought 3, but still lots of fantastic moments.

see also: gucci

― the new mordant & zingy ilxor persona (ilxor), Thursday, January 27, 2011 1:59 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

big time

I thought No Ceilings was pretty great? No Drought 3, but still lots of fantastic moments.

― rihanna rennavated my dick (rennavate), Thursday, January 27, 2011 3:04 PM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

see i wouldnt know -- couldnt make it thru 2 mins of a song on it w/out being like 'ugh his voice'

i get what you're saying tho - when an act falls off, and you realise that the things that you're hating now were always latent in them and it ruins everything in retrospect. i feel that way about girls aloud.

― lextasy refix (lex pretend), Thursday, January 27, 2011 12:15 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

^^this is a really good post, though for me it recently happened with black mountain, not girls aloud

this is a good thread

first of all, there needs to be a tom b graemlin that incorporates this phrase

i know a lot ppl wrote stuff about how great his 'croak' was

maybe a cartoon drawing of tom's face & the bubble says "croak-snarl-rasp" with a ® after it

ANYWAY

my problem with wayne's voice is that, while i still don't mind it & sometimes still find it interesting, it's really a far cry from the way his voice sounded when he was younger, from 500 degreez thru carter & sqad up tapes etc -- those voices were genuinely interesting & unique in rap, right now he just sounds like a dude that smokes too much -- i do think that wayne's voice means a lot more to him too than most other rappers, not just cuz it's different but because i can't think of any rapper off the top of my head that has gone thru so many vocal changes as him -- not only is wayne's music inherently demarcated by sound, but it's definitely inherently demarcated by his voice, and i think that's pretty important & interesting -- i guess there are a fair amount of rappers in history whose era of relevance lasts as long as his, but i don't think there's anyone whose era of relevance spans the years of his life -- age 15 to age 28 -- as wayne. there's so much growth that happens in that timeframe, and that's seen not so much in his music (he improved as a rapper obv & that's important, but it's not like his subject matter really changed all that much) as his voice

right now he just sounds like a dude that smokes too much

yeah kind of a marianne faithful thing going on

i get what you're saying tho - when an act falls off, and you realise that the things that you're hating now were always latent in them and it ruins everything in retrospect. i feel that way about girls aloud.

― lextasy refix (lex pretend), Thursday, January 27, 2011 12:15 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

^^this is a really good post, though for me it recently happened with black mountain, not girls aloud

― smang a goon (get it on) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Thursday, January 27, 2011 9:59 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark

yeah, this is similar to how I felt about metallica for years. but less about latent tendencies with them (thrash stuff really is a different animal) and more about how they fell off to kind of an unbelievable degree. like the "I can't believe I used to like these guys" scene in repo man.

"but i don't think there's anyone whose era of relevance spans the years of his life -- age 15 to age 28 -- as wayne"

To be fair their aren't many music makes of any genre whose era of relevance have spanned from teens/childhood to adulthood.

"yeah kind of a marianne faithful thing going on"

The Lil Wayne Broken English comeback will be a thing to behold.

that said i listened to some sqad up stuff yesterday and was still all "man wayne sounded so dope back then"

my main problem w/ wayne now is not aesthetics but lyrics -- things that ship has already mentioned i.e. laughing at his own jokes & stuff we've talked about before -- pee/poop obsession, the construction of purposefully mispronouncing a word then saying "oops!" and correcting yourself. he just became a much lazier rapper, stopped trying to write vividly and really stopped playing around w/ assonance/syllables -- now everything is "stuck to me like lint on denim" which is a style of rapping that i despise & think is poisonous

xpost to alex in sf

haha yeah i was thinking of that

my main problem w/ wayne now is not aesthetics but lyrics -- things that ship has already mentioned i.e. laughing at his own jokes & stuff we've talked about before -- pee/poop obsession, the construction of purposefully mispronouncing a word then saying "oops!" and correcting yourself. he just became a much lazier rapper, stopped trying to write vividly and really stopped playing around w/ assonance/syllables -- now everything is "stuck to me like lint on denim" which is a style of rapping that i despise & think is poisonous

― kl0pper city in the ghetto (J0rdan S.), Thursday, January 27, 2011 4:14 PM (42 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this is otm but its poisoned his work from then for me as well

also deej i think there's an element here for you where not only has wayne's music poisoned his discography for you but also the continued insistence by critics that he's still the "best rapper alive!!"

You'll get nostalgic for his good stuff eventually, I imagine.

im thinking tht might be temporary but its like, part of whats cool w/ sqad up is your like WHERE IS HE TAKING THIS?? and then u find out where & yr like ugh. def a 'journay >>> destination' thing

journey

i guess there are a fair amount of rappers in history whose era of relevance lasts as long as his, but i don't think there's anyone whose era of relevance spans the years of his life -- age 15 to age 28

It really is incredible, especially considering how the most celebrated rappers often arrive fully formed, putting out their best work early then slowly sliding from greatness. Wayne's arch was just the opposite. For so long, he just kept evolving, getting better and better, taking more risks, finding new talents and new lyrical muses that kept his output fresh. I guess no artists can really keep that winning streak going for that long.

i think part of what makes wayne seem partic annoying though is that his influence is EVERYWHERE but also feels, like, wholly negative?

w/ a roach gigz exception

^yes

the saddest thing about Wayne lately -- i haven't noticed this especially with the new post-jail stuff but it was getting bad before that with "Right Above It" especially, is that at some point he started to sound more derivative of Drake than vice versa

one thing that he has influenced that i think is a definite net positive from you & i's perspective (maybe not whiney or shiplo) is pretty much pioneering (even if the jump off point was 50 or dipset or even jeezy) the M.O. of constantly putting out free mixtapes to try & build buzz and make record labels/buying public/radio take notice of you -- the way wayne operated in the mid-00s is pretty much the standard practice in southern rap & has been for years

i think the way he did it was novel, post-50 but pre-gucci, but thats sort of a 'discovering the mississippi river' type accomplishment? someone was gonna do it

i don't know -- i guess i couldn't place an exact point on the spectrum of how much of wayne's approach to mixtapes was a planned strategy and how much of it was borne out of the 'necessity of moving west' (aka 'discovering the mississippi')

but my inclinations would be to say that it was more of a planned strategy than something he stumbled on

one thing that he has influenced that i think is a definite net positive from you & i's perspective (maybe not whiney or shiplo) is pretty much pioneering (even if the jump off point was 50 or dipset or even jeezy) the M.O. of constantly putting out free mixtapes to try & build buzz and make record labels/buying public/radio take notice of you -- the way wayne operated in the mid-00s is pretty much the standard practice in southern rap & has been for years

― kl0pper city in the ghetto (J0rdan S.), Thursday, January 27, 2011 5:38 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

imo it had great effects in terms of everyone just working harder and not letting their labels sit on their music for years at a time and dictate their output. BUT Wayne also has been more disrespectful toward producers and their contributions to his music than virtually any rapper at his level -- the guys who produced 3 of his biggest singles have sued him for royalties, he talks about doing freestyles all the time because he doesn't want to pay for beats, he doesn't seem to give Mannie much credit for producing 99% of his songs from the first half of his career etc.

BUT Wayne also has been more disrespectful toward producers and their contributions to his music than virtually any rapper at his level

this is true, but how much of it is wayne & how much of it is his daddy

lil' wayne on some oregon trail shit imo

like imo guys like Gucci and smaller artists doing mixtapes full of real songs was a huge improvement over Wayne doing basically really lyrical Weird Al versions of every song on the radio, which is kind of what freestyle mixtapes feel like to me when the rapper is a little too goofy or sticks to the original flow all the time

^^^im feeling this yes

i think thats part of what isnt aging well about even the sqad up tapes for me to a degree. (which again, i think ill probably like more once his influence has dissipated a bit, but...) I mean even listening back to 50's version of that Saadiq song doesnt feel particularly novel to me any more

i think that development that some dude describes has made freestyles over 'the days hot instrumentals' look regressive & much less interesting than they used to

i half agree w/ shipley -- if i had to choose one or the other i would definitely choose the gucci model of churning out a flood of new, original songs, but how many people can do that?

also there must've been an undeniable thrill in 03, 04 w/e in knowing that wayne was gonna put out a sqad up tape where he goes over every single popular beat

i guess thats the result of new songs in general being devalued by the internet

like i wouldn't trade wayne over "renegade" for anything

he's definitely got a gang of classic freestyles -- but the whole 'this random bunch of freestyles that The Empire bootlegged and put on one mixtape is the album of the year/Wayne's best album' thing is bullshit to me

yeah i feel u

like i wouldn't trade wayne over "renegade" for anything

he kills this but i kinda think anyone sounds amazing over this beat. i always wonder how much em really had to do with the production, since it's so different (and better) than any of his other beats. but i digress.

i always liked his version of "show 'em what you got" by jay, cuz i thought that beat was such a fucking terrible mess and he actually made it sound good

I really liked Wayne's voice on Carter III, but it took me hella long to get used to it. his voice was much more easy on the ears between 500 Degrees - Carter II. and he was a more interesting rapper. I like Carter III though but there are some real shitbird songs on it. it's about when he started to really believe he was a rap genius due to all the overpraising it got (didn't Blender give it 5 stars, wtf)

Drake's had a handful of new tracks this year where people've been "omg FIRE, he's spittin' man" and I just don't get it. Dude's literally the first consensus rapper of recent years where I don't mess with his music, I thought NWTS might change that cuz I really dug "Hold On" but nope

found this when looking for an article on Weezy's lyrical 'progression' over the years. I knew he was into terrible shit 'puns'/wordplay but seeing it all in one place points out that he, uh, has a problem!

http://noisey.vice.com/blog/a-comprehensive-guide-to-lil-waynes-poop-references

main takeaway from that article is that Miley Cyrus looked better with her old hair

really though Drake's the one who made the song that sounds the most like a toilet ("Make Me Proud")

I cannot stand Wayne or any of his derivative flock. "Young Money". What a creative name…

has anyone else noticed this? i swear they modeled it after him. Whack as fuck

http://img2-1.timeinc.net/people/i/2013/news/130513/lil-wayne-300.jpg

http://cdn.screenrant.com/wp-content/uploads/Teenage-Mutant-Ninja-Turtles-Trailer-Michaelangelo.jpg

http://images.latinpost.com/data/images/full/8747/michelangelo-teenage-mutant-ninja-turtles-2014.png?w=600

Wayne has a lot of non-Young Money rappers deriving from different aspects of his style over the years, I would not call him himself derivative. although you said "his flock" so ok

One main criticism I have of Wayne since Carter IV or so, maybe a little earlier, is that his wordplay's gotten more obtuse? Possibly a better word for it

I mean something like "if snow fell like hoes fell in love I'd be a snowman" off the last Khaled album is super-wtf and even on "D'usse" with "real niggas don't whine, we'll burn down your vineyard" for example it just doesn't have the cleverness of his best stuff

yeah he definitely hit a point where he kept trying at punchlines but his standards for what constituted a punchline dropped precipitously. the fake deep almost-wordplay like "when a wolf cry wolf, you still see that wolf's teeth."

for a song called "Grindin'" the new Wayne/Drake song is pretty limp.

i'd blame Drake but Wayne mixing the Young Thug inflection (master becomes the student) & Migos flow and coming up with BS is p lame

Really feeling a lot of IANAHB2 lately and I thought it sucked when it dropped bar two songs. It's the least fucks given of any Wayne project ever and I respect that in a sense, plus he goes in on a bunch of tracks

I'm in a definite not taking bullshit zone after a mad stressful week lol so maybe that's why

I love how this has become the default Wayne thread.

lol

I also feel shit like "Romance" is way realer than any Drake-fronting sensitive-to-these-hoes bullshit, vulgarity and all

actually Wayne's good at those type of songs in general. "I'm Single," "Throw It in the Bag" remix, probably other shit I'm forgetting

Agreed. I'm Single and Romance are among his best songs.

"Gunwalk" is my stopplayingwithmebadBayAreadrivers song and "Romance" is my super-into this chick who I got one more day with cuz she's moving tomorrow song lol

actually you can sub "Beat the Shit" for "Gunwalk" on the first one heh

went through some Idon'tgetit BS with this chick I was originally feeling closer and closer to last night, chick out put on "Anaconda" and I was gonna go nuts lol, immediately put on a few songs from this album + other shit

wtf he did a collabo with 2 Chainz? lord step away for two minutes

What's wrong w 2 Chainz

I like Chainz, but can't imagine Wayne can hold his own w/ him at this stage is all

which is to say his dadjoek game is weak now

2 Chainz definitely carries it but it's a fun project, "MFN Right" is the shit

MFN Right kinda came out first on that solo Chainz tape

is he still annoying

Yes

Liked his verse on Seeing Green, though.

not easy Seeing Green

Great verse on "Timeless" by Bennie the Butcher