To my homeys working on the Wayne Gang,

It’s fitting that both Bob and Jonah have brought up Eminem. More than anyone else — the elder Mr. Carter included — Em is the rapper Weezy reminds me of most right now. Not so much his cadences or rhyme patterns, though those are there too (as Jonah pointed out). It’s more the fact that he seems to just be … playing with it. On The Eminem Show Eminem sounded like he’d lost his damn mind, doing Pee Wee Herman impressions and rhyming about utterly wacky nonsense because he just didn’t give a fuck anymore. Wayne projects the same sense of just-foolin’-around, but instead of boredom, he’s driven by curiosity. He loves getting lost inside his own brain, slipping inside every unlocked door just to see where it goes. My favorite example of this is four bars near the end of “Mr. Carter,” where he just takes an idea and runs with it — “Off the Richter /Hector/ Camacho Man Randy Savage/ Far from average/ Above status/ Quo…flow…so…pro…” It’s an earthquake metaphor followed by a name that kind of rhymes with the thing people use to measure earthquakes followed by the last name of a boxer who has that first name followed by a Jeopardy “Before and After” joke about a professional wrestler followed by an offtime couplet that eventually devolves into a string of just-happen-to-rhyme signifiers. And down the rabbit hole we go.

I learned long ago not to argue with someone who knows more Latin than me, so I won’t take issue with Nick’s claim about narratives vs. sentences vs. shit that just sounds really cool. But I would like to point out that “non-linear” is not the same as “non-narrative.” By which I mean, just because Wayne doesn’t have expositions and resolutions and character arcs, doesn’t mean he’s not telling a story. Even if the story is just, I am effing crazy.

I do have to disagree though, Nick, with your comparison of Carter III to one of Brian Eno’s physically pleasing, non-demanding ambient odysseys. (Fun fact: “Ambient Odyssey” is also the name of a delicious blueberry-apple smoothie I had yesterday.) To me, Carter III is the opposite of non-demanding. I was trying to write this post with the album playing in the background, in fact, and I couldn’t do it. Had to turn it off. I kept getting drawn in — by the beats, by Wayne’s one-liners, and yes, by his “orality.” (No you-know-what.) Eno’s wallpaper music is cool and monochrome, the aural equivalent of a rainy Saturday afternoon spent playing chess on your iMac. Wayne’s wallpaper, on the other hand, is sizzurp-vision colorful, and peeling at the corners, and reeking of weed and sweat and not a little sex, and hey, is that blood over there?

David Lee Roth had a great line about rock critics loving Elvis Costello because rock critics all looked like Elvis Costello. I think music critics love Wayne because we think like Wayne — or at least would like to believe we do, or would if we could. Wayne sees juxtapositions, patterns, dots waiting to be connected. He thinks, in other words, like a critic. Here’s somebody or other, writing about Da Drought 3:

[Wayne is] a rapper who secretly albeit clearly to me gives a shit about what he's doing, so much so that he doesn't even want to get paid for it. He just wants validation. He wants somebody to rise to his level and read the fuck out of these lyrics, really think about how they fit together track after track.

In other words, Lil Wayne needs us! And he appreciates us! On Dedication 2’s “Sportscenter” he even gave a special shout-out to magazine editors. Not our magazine, granted, but hey, we take what we can get. Word nerds, unite!

But lucky for Wayne (and us), critics aren’t the only ones who love him. I hate to keep harping on sales (although then again why not, because sales are the whole point here — otherwise he’d be giving this one away free, too), but a projected 900K+ in the first week? More than Mariah and Usher did in their first weeks combined? To me, that qualifies as an event. Maybe Nick is right, and in this fractured, ADHD, hyper-whatever culture, Everything Is a Mixtape. But I have friends who buy maybe three albums a year and they couldn’t wait to get their hands on this one. Does it count as irony that one of the people most responsible for exposing the flaws of the record-industry’s distribution model might also be doing more than almost anyone to save it?

Anyway, rap album of the year. Download it now if you haven’t already. Heck, BitTorrent a copy to give to your daddy this Sunday. And be sure to give it to him with a big wet kiss.

Josh