lil wayne is annoying

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'

frat rap = "jump around", "insane in the brain" maybe "slam"?

or do u mean like college radio rap

nah 'slam' 'jump around' 'bust a move' 'i gotta man' 'it was a good day' etc

maybe a tribe song or 2

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

― tuomascratch beat (deej), Thursday, January 27, 2011 5:28 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i think you hit on it best right here

like wayne's been so prolific that it's much harder to sound fresh if you're showing his influence

the difference is that the frat-rap crowd now has artists/auteurs they follow instead of just being into random popular rap singles

not buying this @ all

yeah, i wondered if people were getting burnt out on wayne.
just heard "six foot seven foot", and he sounds fucking ferocious, but no buzz at all....

not buying this @ all

― the new mordant & zingy ilxor persona (ilxor), Thursday, January 27, 2011 8:29 PM (37 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

fascinating perspective, sb'd you

way to support yr argument lol. classy!

100 new answers by EOD

― the new mordant & zingy ilxor persona (ilxor), Thursday, January 27, 2011 12:00 PM (Yesterday)

hmmmm. i was close!

lil wayne is annoying 98 new answers

ilxor is annoying

thank you for that

lil wayne is annoying 100 new answers

ilxor, stfu, seriously

lol

I haven't read this thread but I pretty much feel the opposite of deej. I love his voice so much that I'll enjoy even subpar shit from just cause his instrument is so gd amazing.

from him*

I haven't read this thread but I pretty much feel the opposite of deej. I love his voice so much that I'll enjoy even subpar shit from just cause his instrument is so gd amazing.

― smanging pumpkins (The Reverend), Friday, January 28, 2011 4:09 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark

where was Rebirth on your year-end list?

Well obviously there are limits to that.

Yeah but...do you not listen to that stuff just because you don't particularly like the music, or does his voice or the way he uses it eventually cross an annoyingness threshold at some point?

Well, I'm just simply not interested in him doing a album of shitty buttrock, along with the rest of the world.

I mean, I was referring more to something like No Ceilings where it's kind of like...ok, he's not at the top of his game here, but he's still a joy to listen to as opposed to something like Rebirth which is obviously the most godawful shit ever.

does his voice or the way he uses it eventually cross an annoyingness threshold at some point

otm ^^

for me it's not so much "annoyed" by his voice on Rebirth, i think most would agree the stylistic detour into butt-rock was the main reason that album sunk like a boulder. anyway, i get what rev's saying-- his voice is a great instrument, but he needs to play to his stylistic strengths and ~WRITE COMPELLING LYRICS~ that don't come across as smdh.gif

You just otmed a question dawg.

well I mean, Rebirth wasn't all straight-up rock -- "On Fire" was pretty much a rap song from a production standpoint and slightly less so from a lyrical standpoint, and it was his annoying voice and persona that mostly made it a shitty song imo.

Oh. After hearing the first couple songs that came out of that project, I just avoided the rest.

it was the 2nd single

You just otmed a question dawg.

looooooool i need coffee ^____^

Ok, well afaik I haven't heard it. xp

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).

― Evan R, Thursday, January 27, 2011 6:50 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

but see to me, Jay and Wayne are both guys that got to where they are with a lot of hard work and a lot of great music, but at some point the momentum carried them no matter what kind of music they make. that happens in music all the time, but I think it used to happen less in rap. Jay-Z still setting trends is just a self-fulfilling prophecy, because rappers have 10 years of practice of copying or reacting to everything he does, turning his lyrics into catchphrases, and sampling his voice for hooks; Jay could jump off a proverbial bridge tomorrow, and by the end of next week we'd have 100 other rappers swimming in the Hudson River. that doesn't mean he contributed to the culture in any meaningful or innovative way, he just did some old bullshit and the biters bit him.

State the obvious.

?

you guys, this VV article is relevant to the thread if you havent read it before (def. worth a few min)

http://www.villagevoice.com/2009-01-21/music/the-curious-case-of-lil-wayne

was written back in 2009 btw in case that's not clear

Anyone defending Wayne in 2008 had to contend with a cavalcade of bad ideas.

& the same ppl are still defending him three years later

yeah i feel like people need to take a long hard look at his post-Carter 3 output, which maybe has been treated with soft expectations because none of it was labeled "Carter 4"

Anyone defending Wayne in 2008 had to contend with a cavalcade of bad ideas.

This is a completely separate issue imo

a separate issue from him being annoying? not really.

The statements "dude has an annoying vocal tone" and "dude has a lot of bad ideas lately" aren't equivalent at all, esp considering I agree with one and not with the other.

well my argument has been that the latter has begot the former

hear enough bad ideas w/ the same vocal tone & u start to associate them

lol this is getting into "it's not you, it's me" costanza rap criticism territory