Occasionally he’s referenced his recent legal troubles: “I’m on probation/So my nerves bad” he says, on the remix of DJ Khaled’s “Welcome to My Hood.” On the remix of Birdman’s “Fire Flame,” he boasts, “They say it costs to be the boss/I paid the price, including tax.” No longer is he making formal innovations and only occasionally is he expanding his subject matter. On the whole, apart from songs like “Look at Me Now,” the Lil Wayne of late 20 isn’t the sui generis Lil Wayne of 2007, when he leaked songs at a racetrack pace, some fantastic, some curious, all fascinating.Įven Lil Wayne’s thinnest recent songs have featured some of the tossed-off one-liners that, in his tinny croak, sound more clever than they already are: “swagger just dumb/call it Kelly Bundy,” “shoot you nine times just in case you got cat lives,” “so misunderstood, but what’s a world without enigma?” And of course, from “6 Foot 7 Foot,” “real Gs move in silence like lasagna.”Īs with before, when Wayne finds a theme he likes, he sticks with it: “pockets on obese,” “pockets on bodybuilder,” “pockets on Mo’Nique.” Or alternately, “They tipping on a budget/Man, they pockets getting skinny/ What is that, Jennifer Hudson?” Mostly they’ve been appearances on other people’s records, and at least a few of them sound as if they might have been made preincarceration. In his 2007 prime the number would have been double that, easily. He’s released about a couple dozen songs in the five or so months since he left prison. Now that he’s home, though, he’s been in a bit of a holding pattern. “Weezy on top,” and he “ain’t even home/Yet,” Drake rapped on Nicki Minaj’s “Moment 4 Life.” He had one legitimate hit, the Drake collaboration “Right Above It,” and any number of smaller ones. Before Rikers, he was so deep into his winning streak that he was on the verge of an experimental phase, as heard on the sometimes noxious rock album “Rebirth” and the intermittently appealing odds-and-ends collection “I Am Not a Human Being.”īut his absence quickly absolved him of those small sins. Lil Wayne is the only star of his generation, save Kanye West, who can consistently fill rooms of this size. For almost two hours Lil Wayne was vibrant in a performance that was less a show of progress than a reassertion of primacy. None of that mattered, though, on Sunday night at Nassau Coliseum here when Lil Wayne’s “I Am Still Music” tour arrived for the first of two sold-out shows. And bombast returned to the genre, in the form of Rick Ross and Waka Flocka Flame. His protégés Drake and Nicki Minaj took over hip-hop’s center, though neither had the specific manic energy of the boss. But much changed during Lil Wayne’s “eight-month vacation,” as he’s called it. When he left for jail, he was the most popular rapper in the country and also, at times, the absolute best, a dynamo of intricacy, exuberance and swagger. 4, and a reminder that when he’s so inclined, he can weave words like few others. Nuisance, stupid, Stooges, sushi, pollution, substitution, movies, Jacuzzi, juicy: all that assonance is in just the first few seconds of Lil Wayne’s verse on Chris Brown’s “Look at Me Now,” one of his best since Lil Wayne’s release from Rikers Island on Nov. It seemed ungainly at first, awkward sounding and unrevealing. Just before Lil Wayne, a k a Weezy, went to jail last March, he took on a new nickname, Lil Tunechi.
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