lil wayne is annoying

"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)

I kind of feel like for better or worse major rap stardom used to be a pretty short-lived thing -- sometimes because a great rapper got killed in his prime, but more often because they just kind of had a good run of 2-3 huge albums and then fell off or their type of music fell out of style. like even Snoop -- he was huge for a while, and then things tapered off and he was kind of a downsized mid-level star. but after Jay kind of proved that you can be a hugely rapper for a really long time, now it feels like we're got this calcified A-list that loses or gains members at a slower rate than it used to. and Wayne is one of the beneficiaries of that, who in the old rap world people probably would've kinda moved on from by now, but he's got this semi-permanent residence in the zeitgeist no matter what he does or how bad his rapping gets.

ha "hugely rapper" -- hugely popular rapper

d.l. hugely rapper

^^^^ raps only about bitchy old grandmas and ass-wiping technique

one thing about wayne & the zeitgeist is that he helped extend his place in it by "discovering"/putting on/signing drake & nicki -- now nicki has replaced drake who replaced wayne as guest du juor, but the fact that they're all tight & thus all over each others' songs is something that has benefited wayne as opposed to, idk, akon or t-pain to pick recent examples

you could even make the same argument, tho to a lesser extent, if you replace wayne w/ jay & nicki/drake w/ kanye

I'm delighted by how great this thread is. Anyway:

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

To me this was part of what was so exciting in the mid-00s... hearing a good beat with a meh rapper, thinking Wayne would slay the hell out of it, waiting just a few weeks, then indeed hearing him slay the hell out of it. That carried through to No Ceilings, where many of the versions were better than the originals, but I don't know how well these mixtapes will age, since they're all very much a product of a very specific point in pop culture. Mixtapes are a shaky thing to pin your legacy to.

I kind of feel like for better or worse major rap stardom used to be a pretty short-lived thing ... but after Jay kind of proved that you can be a hugely rapper for a really long time, now it feels like we're got this calcified A-list that loses or gains members at a slower rate than it used to. and Wayne is one of the beneficiaries of that, who in the old rap world people probably would've kinda moved on from by now, but he's got this semi-permanent residence in the zeitgeist no matter what he does or how bad his rapping gets.

This point is probably OTM, but I think it underestimates how much Jay-Z and Wayne are still contributing to rap culture. They're still making hits, still popularizing ideas (if not quite coining them like they used to), and in Wayne's case in particular, still siring very important proteges (for better or worse, obv).

i hadn't heard "right above it" until a few weeks ago & holy shit that's one of the worst songs of the year -- right up there w/ "my chick bad"

i have no clue as to what "ideas" jay is currently popularizing

lil wayne is on a verse on one of the songs on Madden 2011 and he is uber irritating on it, and not just cuz the game replays it over and over again...

if you go by Blueprint 3, Jay-Z is basically saying he's awesome but eschewing all the creative ways of saying it that he utilized on the first Blueprint.

album woulda been more enjoyable over a 4/4 bassline with jay-z going 'i'm the shit' on repeat for 50 minutes.

That carried through to No Ceilings, where many of the versions were better than the originals

see i disagree big time here, i can't think of any song he bettered on that tape

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

― williamstevenjames (some dude), Thursday, January 27, 2011 5:37 PM (1 hour ago)

^this is so otm

i feel like there was this weird moment in the late 90s / early 00s -- which for a long time i thought of as 'normal' but now im realizing was in fact the 'weird moment' -- where u have, like, 'frat rap crossover' and 'underground' (meaning like regional / street rap, not backpack/indie ish) and these were coinciding really spectacularly (possibly due to popularity w/ girls) and both 'frat rap' and 'underground' rap fans continued to be rap fans after rap fell out w/ 'girls' (meaning the broad, mainstream dance/club ppl who are now into black eyed peas / guetta ish) and they are still kinda related crowds but dont entirely overlap the way they did in the early 00s. so you have jay-z bridging the two groups to some degree (although def w/ a stronger hold in 'frat rap'), kanye in 'frat rap,' gucci in 'underground' (minimal crossover here, judging by my 'regular white dude rap fan' friend whose appreciate of gucci started & ended with 'lemonade'), and lil wayne a transition from the latter to the former

obv speaking in massive generalizations here

but things are back to how they were in the 80s/90s -- youve got your crossover 'baby got back' and 'bust a move's and still -- the difference is that the frat-rap crowd now has artists/auteurs they follow instead of just being into random popular rap singles

& fwiw & importantly, i dont think 'underground' and 'frat rap' are as divided by race as they are by class? although there are def racial issues 'at play'

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