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So, Apparently There's a New Lil Wayne Album...

Posted 06/10/2008 at 2:51 PM  |  1 comment/s

Lil Wayne: "Let the Beat Build" (prod. by Kanye West & Deezle)
from Tha Carter III

Lil Wayne: "Let the Beat Build" (Instrumental) (prod. by Kanye West & Deezle)

Lil Wayne feat. Fabolous & Juelz Santana: "Ain't Nothin' On Me" (prod. by Alchemist)
from Tha Carter III

Lil Wayne: "Playin' With Fire" (prod. by Streetrunner)
from Tha Carter III

Have you heard? The deluge of reviews came down today, though most of us have been living with Tha Carter III for 10 days or so, weighing the excitement created by Dedication 2, then Da Drought 3 and then Tha Carter III Sessions--three mixtapes that probably had more to do with this anticipation than anything--against the short but furious round of applause Tha Carter III is now catching. And in most respects rightly so. The album is nothing if not interesting, critics' bait. Unorthodox by design, it's still unclear if Universal cobbled this album together without Wayne's input--something he's insinuated in the past--or Dwayne Carter personally selected and sequenced the tracks. Regardless it's a tale of two halves. The first half, from "3 Peat" to the Robin Thicke re-team "Tie My Hands," is unhinged and thematically inconsistent, the work of a rapper with his eyes on both the charts (the vaguely deplorable "Got Money") and the nerds (the swelling, then soaring "Dr. Carter," which is basically a Ras Kass song without the references to Greek Mythology). The most conventional and maybe the most honest song here, the Babyface-aided romantic threat "Comfortable," is followed by "Phone Home" which from one listen to the next dances from brilliant to brutally dumb and back again. It's a confusing run, each song working independent of each other, almost every one a goof of some sort, even the stonefaced "Mr. Carter." That song is limp by Just Blaze standards and a bit embarrassing for Wayne considering he's annihilated by one of the few transcendent Jay-Z guest verses of the last 5 years ("That's right, plural!"), a fact particularly punishing because Jay's verse both addresses Wayne as an heir and then cops Wayne's boastful, gymnastic non sequitur formula, but sharpens it. The fun here of the first half is in the foolishness. Wayne can't be 'Pac or Jay or B.I.G.--he's just too weird and this is the work of a weirdo.

Half number two is more the work of an artist taking himself seriously, looking in the mirror (literally on "Shoot Me Down") and then lashing out at the world (Screaming "Assassinate me, bitch!" on the insane "Playin' With Fire"). Even "Lollipop" an indisputably smart, but cynical move that will probably give it the best-selling first week for a rap album since Kanye's Graduation, has a large, lush feel, with the late Static and Jim Jonsin working together to make a complete song, not just a playpen for Wayne's zonked-out flow. Which leads to what seems like the driving force that no one is talking about: I still insist that the way Wayne sounds--maybe not the pitch, but certainly the tone and the patterns of his voice--is informed by drinking lean everyday. If drugs are creative fuel, I think you can chalk the almost-discomforting flows on this album to his detachment from reality and morbid self-involvement. Most rappers are arrogant, but Wayne is self-involved and solipsistic. "Ain't Nothin' On Me," which is a bit of a sore thumb in that it's a straightforward, thunderous rap song on an album full of experiments, is a perfect example. Juelz and especially Fabolous decimate the song, weaving through Alchemist's cascading "Wet Wipes" retread. But after Fab's verse Wayne's vocodered voice slithers in, moaning and gurgling "I get money like a motherfucker," making no effort to top what just happened to his song: theft. Juelz follows with the album's most evocative line--"My wrist look like frozen Poland Spring water"--and then Wayne arrives rip-roaring through his verse, but eventually settling into more vocoder games as the track drops out. This is a guy interested in his thing, his ideas, his conception of his moment. Not winning, necessarily, but certainly being. Existing how he wants. "Let the Beat Build," the most well-conceived track here, is a perfect production synthesis, as Wayne's engineer Deezle and Kanye West combine for a rising and falling carousel of song. Wayne is doing the mixtape rapper thing again ("Approving millionaire dollar deals from my iPhone...") triumphantly, with a cleared sample, and talking about the beat ("and the beat go boom, ba-boom-ba-boom") as though it were his partner, which, naturally it is. And it too is a personal moment. I'm going to pretend "Mrs. Officer" doesn't exist.

The closer "Misunderstood" is probably the most messianic, rambling song he's ever made, a perfect capper to an eminently listenable, but sometimes worrying collection. The distance of coherence between "Dr. Carter" and that unsettling groan from "Ain't Nothin' On Me" is really something, a split of clear proportions. Just like the two halves of the album. And the two halves of Wayne's career: pre- and post-"Go DJ." Those two personalities, and more, exist in the same space on Tha Carter III.

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