“Wayne is one of the architects of modern hip-hop’s manic sprawl.”

September 29, 2018 11:43 AM

Tha Carter V Is Lil Wayne’s Best Album in Years [Vulture] “Lil Wayne is one of the most successful rappers of all time by any measure, a mercurial once-in-a-lifetime talent who found his calling before he hit puberty and has been a public figure since he was a teenager. The reign was never a cakewalk; it’s possible to live your dreams and still be racked with adversity and doubt. Wayne’s Tha Carter V, the latest installment in the Louisiana rapper’s running series of epochal blockbuster studio albums, should be a celebration, and it often is. The lengthy legal proceedings that tied the album up for the last four years are over, and Wayne is rapping with the bullish bluster of someone who has rediscovered his purpose.” [Don't Cry (ft. XXXTentacion)][Mess][Mona Lisa (ft. Kendrick Lamar]

• Lil Wayne’s ‘Tha Carter V’ Took 5 Years to Make. Why It Still Hits Hard in 2018 [Rolling Stone]

“By necessity, the lengthy gestation period for this album meant that Wayne and his associates kept having to update old music so that it sounded modern — in hip-hop, fashionable sounds come and go rapidly. “A lot of times it’s just [a matter of] changing kicks and snares to make sure it’s not 2012, it’s 2018,” says Ben Billions, who co-produced three songs on Tha Carter V. One of his songs, “Open Letter,” was originally intended for the 2014 version of the album. So were “Hittas,” “Famous,” “Mona Lisa” and “Let It All Work Out.” Some of these tracks required intense overhauls. Take “Mona Lisa,” which features rapping from Kendrick Lamar — still dazzling, even though the song began four years ago. “For the past three years I’ve been chipping away at the song,” says Infamous, who co-produced the track. “The beat was different, more of a four-bar rap loop. Once I heard Kendrick’s part, they went so in on it, I couldn’t just leave a four-bar loop for them. [The adjustments] started off with, ‘let’s change the chords here, add some strings.’ Then it turned into, ‘alright, let’s cut everything to tape and record everything like it’s the 1960s so I can treat it like a sample and re-sample it.'””

• Kendrick Lamar and Lil Wayne Are a Perfect Student-Master Duo on "Mona Lisa" [Noisey]

“The road to Lil Wayne’s Tha Carter V has been a long one. The album’s rollout has been marred by lawsuits, reconciliations, and even more lawsuits before finally being released seven years after it was first teased. Though there’s not yet a clear standout on the behemoth 23-track album (in this case the lengthy tracklist is justified; we’ve waited long enough as it is), the most talked about song so far has been the much-anticipated collaboration between Wayne and Kendrick Lamar on the Onhel & Infamous-produced “Mona Lisa.” The track, initially teased to the world in 2014 through disgraced “Pharma bro” Martin Shkreli, has little to no hook and is seemingly all BARS BARS BARS on first skim, as the two tell a story about a woman who sets her boyfriend up to get robbed. But what is most interesting about the track is that it's a long-awaited bookend to years of homages and tributes from Lamar to Weezy.”

posted by Fizz (10 comments total)

**I'm realizing that the YouTube links I used for Mess and Mona Lisa might only be available to YouTube premium members (I have a free trial active right now), so apologies for that. If the mods need to remove those links, they should.
posted by Fizz at 11:45 AM on September 29, 2018

Is the title of "Mona Lisa" in any way also a reference to Slick Rick, or am I reading too much into that?
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 12:08 PM on September 29, 2018 [1 favorite]

If anything the snippet above the fold sells Wayne short. The amount and quantity of music he released through mixtapes in the 2000's was alien and changed hiphop. He's kind of a frustrating artist to recommend to people today, because many of his best songs are mixtape tracks which you can't get on any streaming apps. If youre into hiphop but have only ever heard radio Weezy, check these out:

Da Drought 3
Dedication 2
The Dedication

This is a long way of saying thanks for the post, and I'm excited for the Carter V.

(and just on the subject of hiphop, the new thugger EP is amazing)
posted by yeahwhatever at 12:25 PM on September 29, 2018 [9 favorites]

I've listened to about a third of it. I can't imagine how any significant amount of hip hop fans who've listened to a lot of good hip hop, lump him in with any of the greats. But every artist isn't for every fan, there's no accounting for taste, your favorite band sucks, blah blah, get off my lawn and so forth.
posted by cashman at 2:35 PM on September 29, 2018 [2 favorites]

I need to check it out in-depth, but XXXTentacion was a piece of shit, and No Ceilings will probably forever be my fav Weezy mixtape.
posted by gucci mane at 3:14 PM on September 29, 2018 [1 favorite]

So I'm in the meh camp when it comes to Lil Wayne - being raised on 80's and early 90's stuff - but hell, I poo-poo'd Tyler's work for a long time and am absolutely digging his last album, so need to remind myself to keep an open mind :)

Thanks for the mixtape links yeahwhatever - sounds like that'll be a good touchpoint.
posted by sektah at 3:15 PM on September 29, 2018

I was so excited that this had been released, I gave my very uninterested Uber driver a ten minute explainer on why it was so important!
posted by ellieBOA at 9:49 PM on September 29, 2018 [2 favorites]

If you ever have the chance to see Wayne perform, do it. His charisma was palpable all the way to the back of the venue. He was on fire and so excited to be there. It was one of the best live shows I've seen, in large part because of his energy.
posted by sockermom at 5:52 AM on September 30, 2018 [2 favorites]

Album and track info on Genius, and Wikipedia for good measure.
posted by filthy light thief at 11:45 AM on October 1, 2018

Lil Wayne on Life, Lawsuits & The Long Road To 'Tha Carter V' [Billboard]
posted by ellieBOA at 10:48 PM on October 1, 2018