Dear Young People —

To quote our hero, I’m me. Four decades older than my fellow bloggers and writing about hip-hop before they were alive or at least out of diapers, which is not a casual metaphor. But despite this bona fide, I’m not a hip-hop person the way they are—especially Nick and Jonah. I am downloading-impaired (wasted 15 minutes this morning trying to cop LilWeezyAna Vol. 1), buy mixtapes only when someone like Nick tells me to twice, never listen to hip-hop or any other kind of radio because I’m too busy playing CDs, and dance to hip-hop maybe once a year, one of many learning experiences I wish I had more time for. By my lights, I love hip-hop—play it for my contemporaries whenever they give me the chance. But it’s not the center of my musical universe—which in fact has no center, expanding as it does.

The purpose of this lengthy preamble is to set up my own response to Tha Carter III, which I now own in three almost totally different iterations, two ID’d as “mixtapes.” That’s counting the burn Blender got to me Saturday and the one I AmExed at Virgin at midnight Monday as one, although the track order is different and my “deluxe edition” includes a disc containing The Leak EP (which starts with “I’m Me,” as I already knew from Rhapsody and my Sansa player). I think Jonah is right—“album” means something very different from “mixtape” in the commercial climate Wayne has mastered or at least confronted with such audacity and imagination. I’ve listened to that album half a dozen times now, and—sorry, but this is how I run my business—still don’t really know what I think of it. But I can say this much. I like it, sure. A or A minus record, very likely. Right now, however, there’s not a thing on it I enjoy as much as “I’m Me” or “Kush” on my bonus disc. Maybe tomorrow that’ll change—likely it will change. But although my favorite hip-hop album of the decade is Kanye’s highly produced Late Registration, in this case album-ness is not a plus. “Lollipop,” which I first heard here for reasons suggested in my first graf? Pretty weak. Kanye’s “Comfortable”? I’m not convinced even though—unlike Nick, if I’m understanding him correctly, though I was surprised to see him say this—I don’t normally give a fuck about “authenticity.” I don’t give a fuck whether Weezy wrote the rhymes or Gillie the Kid did (though a return to Gillie the Kid today left me highly dubious about the latter), and I don’t give a fuck if Weezy is any kind of love man (or indeed, heterosexual, though it would admittedly be cool if he was in fact gay). But six times in, with room to change my mind, “Comfortable” is not a slow jam for me and my lady. Its dishonesty lacks conviction.

Although like Josh I find Wayne’s mixtapes overwhelming, it’s their overwhelmingness that has rendered him the most important rapper and indeed pop artist since Kanye fell off, as he did last September. He is unlikely ever to make a Late Registration or even a The Chronic (which I still can’t stand but respect for its influence and iconicity). What’s great about him is that he’s out of control. He overproduces, runs on at the mouth, can’t stop himself. As Josh says, he’s in love with language—more even than Eminem or Chuck D, very nearly (although not quite) in early Dylan territory. At the same time, he loves rapping, but the two aren’t really distinguishable. The shit just rolls on and on and on, and some of it is brilliant and some of it isn’t, but when it isn’t brilliant it gets close enough soon enough. I especially love “I Feel Like Dying,” the best song about getting high since the Rolling Stones’ “Moonlight Mile.” But the track I play for my contemporaries is “Intro” from Da Drought 3. It has that Mims beat that I never heard until Weezy brought it to my attention, and thank you Mims even if I can’t understand why the fuck your version was so huge. (One reason I like the mixtapes is that Wayne jacks and improves all those hit beats I’m not nearly tired of. Though the long sample from the Beatles’ “Help” on one of my Carter IIIs holds up pretty good.) But that moment when he moves from “I can jump on any nigga’s song and make a part two” and all its attendant impossible rhymes and then moves on to the dancehall-stylee “Murder dem,” as if to say before I was this and now I’m that and four lines from now I’ll be something else and that’s why I’m better than you. Or rather, one reason I’m better than you. There are many. I heard something in his flow even when he was pushing the thug shit I hate.

This brings me to the misogyny question Josh raised. Gangsta-etc. is a metaphor system. Problem is, very often it’s a socially retrograde metaphor system, or even worse, a metaphor system invented to camouflage the socially retrograde. I have no use for it unless it’s truly brilliant—classic example: M.O.P.’s “Ante Up,” one of the great singles of the past decade (with a pretty good album attached). But Lil Wayne is clearly playing with the shit. There are moments—I’d have to go looking for them, but I do notice them as they pass by—when he shades over into the socially retrograde. But his sense of play swallows those moments up. Very New Orleans, this. Listen to the Wild Tchoupitoulas sometime. Mardi Gras Indians. Very upful. Sing about killing each other, among other things. I love ‘em.

My favorite track so far is on the bonus disc. “I’m Me,” natch. Let me say bye with a few lines: “The only time I will depend is when I’m 70 years old/That’s when I can’t hold my shit within, so I shit on myself/Cause I’m so sick and tired of shitting on everybody else.” Just one thing, authenticity-wise. In my experience, folks don’t need Depends—those are diapers, young people—till they’re past 80. Hope I’m right.

RC

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