 Rolling Stone has named Lil Wayne 2008's Best MC. Which is quite an accomplishment considering Lil Wayne hasnt even released an album this year. In fact his last album Tha Carter II came out in 05. Read the whole article now.
Lil Wayne has two primary passions: making music and
smoking weed. Tonight, those have come into conflict. Wayne is sitting on his
tour bus in New Orleans, having come back to his hometown for two concerts.
He'd like to head into a studio to do some mixing for Tha Carter III,
2008's most anticipated rap album. But there's a problem. Wayne isn't allowed
to smoke in the studio. So he stays on the bus, lighting blunt after blunt and
watching Animal Planet on the TV. He'll sleep there tonight for the same
reason: Wayne can't smoke in his hotel room either.
When Wayne speaks, it's with that same voice from his records: a needling,
grizzled croak that's one of the most distinctive sounds in pop music. On the
bus, Wayne comes off as a funny motherfucker. He leaves everyone in stitches
with a story about how he had to clean graffiti off a house owned by Cash
Money Records founder Bryan "Baby" Williams. "We were out there scrubbing for
a day!" he shrieks. "That shit is still on the house, nigga! Even after
Katrina!"
Wayne's not always like this. Sometimes he's pensive, and he can turn surly
without notice. Oftentimes, he's just plain weird: Over dinner in Miami last
summer, he spluttered through a half-coherent, very stoned monologue in which
he compared people in New Orleans to crabs in boiling water, then segued into
the kind of crabs that show up in your pants: "I had that shit! The worst!"
Wayne's rhymes are as varied as his moods, ranging from quick-tongued
braggadocio about girls, cash and guns to gut-wrenching expressions of
personal pain. He's a compulsively listenable dude who will sometimes sing
(badly) and rhyme in French; a five-foot-six-inch bundle of energy spitting
left-field references — Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Bill Laimbeer, tooth
fairies — and consistently great punch lines: "My spot remain, like a bleach
stain, or cranberry/It's murder she wrote, like Angela Lansbury." He's been
getting stranger lately, too, turning out stream-of-consciousness flows and
trippy flights of fancy like the amazing mixtape cut "I Feel Like Dying," on
which he sounds seriously zonked: "I can mingle with the stars and throw a
party on Mars/I am a prisoner locked up behind Xanax bars." He may be all over
the place, but this is certain: Lil Wayne — a.k.a. Dwayne Michael Carter Jr.,
a.k.a. the Pussy Monster, a.k.a. Weezy F. Baby — is one of the most unusual
rappers of all time. And right now, he's the best around. Just ask him. Wayne
began calling himself "the greatest rapper alive" in 2005. Since then, he's
been repeating and backing up that claim on cameos and countless mixtapes. Two
of those mixes — Da Drought 3 and The Drought Is Over 2: The
Carter III Sessions — were among the best albums of 2007.
Wayne grew up a wild kid in New Orleans who dealt crack and once
accidentally shot himself in the chest. "It was my mom's gun," Wayne says. "It
was like a chopper hit me. But the bullet went straight through, and I bounced
back in two weeks." Thankfully, Wayne soon discovered hip-hop and began
battle-rapping. When he was eleven, he had the good fortune of befriending
Baby Williams and started helping out at Cash Money Records. By the time he
was fourteen, Wayne had a record deal.
From there, Wayne became moderately famous as a pint-size member of the rap
supergroup Hot Boys, and he proved an above-average gangsta MC on his early
albums. Recently, though, he's attained a level of greatness hardly anyone
could have expected, spitting rhymes that are wittier, odder and broader in
subject matter than anyone else's. In the past year, stars like Kanye West and
Jay-Z have featured Wayne on their songs. And he's become a constant presence
on hip-hop message boards and blogs, which feature feverish chatter about
Wayne's latest stanzas, his sexual preferences (sparked by a photo of him
kissing mentor Williams), his drug use and occasional legal troubles. (He's
currently facing gun- and drug-possession charges in New York and Arizona.
Wayne pleaded not guilty in both cases.)
Wayne is also the rare pop star who has been able to dramatically raise his
profile in the last two years without releasing an official LP. There's a wealth
of Wayne material — all those mixtapes and leaked songs — that has surfaced
online. The hip-hop merch site mixunit.com sells twenty-three mixes featuring
Wayne, most of which are easy to find online for free. This isn't some kind of
viral marketing plan. It's just this: Wayne makes new songs like you make lunch,
and songs have a way of getting out — especially when they're as irresistible as
Wayne's.
How many tracks has Wayne cut in recent years? "Somewhere in the thousands,"
he says. (He's been smoking.) The real number is probably closer to 500, but
what's clear is that Wayne is an irrepressible studio rat. "Recording is an
addiction," he says. "I can't stop." Wayne works quickly — he writes nothing
down, records rhymes as soon as they pop into his head, and completes up to five
songs a day. He can also knock out a verse for someone else within a half-hour
of hearing the beat. That has served him well financially: Wayne charges
$100,000 for the average cameo — or $75,000 if he likes the beat or the song.
"But nothing less!" Wayne says. "I wouldn't do a song for my sister for less
than $75,000."
After more than six months of delays, Wayne's sixth official solo album is
finally slated for June. This is partly because Wayne wants to keep tweaking
songs; and partly because of difficulty in getting clearance from featured
artists' record labels (he's recorded with Lil Mama and Busta Rhymes, among
others). Another possible reason: All the prospective Carter III
material that's leaked online has prompted Wayne to record new album tracks,
which only extends the delay; Wayne has said that no leaked material will end up
on Carter III. Though Carter III will probably be one of
2008's best-selling hip-hop albums, it's hard to imagine it being better than
Wayne's best mixtapes. Wayne doesn't seem concerned — in fact, he won't even
help select the track list. "I just come up with good songs," he says. "It's up
to [Universal Records] to figure out what goes on. I don't want that headache."
After a late night on the bus, Wayne steps into a class at Eleanor McMain
Secondary School in New Orleans, which he attended back in the Nineties. He's
here for a Q-and-A session. Wayne cheerfully answers kids' questions about his
nine-year-old daughter, his favorite cameo (Destiny's Child's "Soldier") and Lil
Wayne haters out there ("If they ain't talking about you, you ain't doing nothin',"
he says). After forty-five minutes with the kids, Wayne climbs back into the
tour bus. He visits a Katrina-damaged athletic field, which he's helping to
restore through his new One Family Foundation, then heads off to play a gig in
Atlanta. Wayne's tour will end within weeks, but he's not taking any time off.
Soon he'll put the finishing touches on Carter III and head off on his
first-ever European tour.
Maybe Wayne will find time to improve his guitar skills; he's a self-taught
axman who played on Enrique Iglesias' "Push." Or maybe he'll get his psychology
degree, too; he's been taking online classes from the University of Phoenix.
Maybe he'll also shrink from fame — sort of (but hopefully not exactly) like his
favorite rock star, Kurt Cobain. "He was a rebel — he didn't give a fuck," Wayne
says. "That's me."
Source:
Rolling Stone
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