The Sad Truth About Lil Wayne

As we all know, Tha Carter III is starting to look like the Chinese Democracy of rap albums. It was originally set to be released in December, but then the tracks leaked and Wayne decided to push back the album until June. But if you listen to the youtube of clips from the album and Lollipop, the lead single, you’ll realize that TCIII probably isn’t that great. Sure, it sounds good, and considering the dearth of signifigant rap albums we’ve had lately, you can expect Weezy to dominate the radio, Tv and blogs all summer. But III isn’t going to be anything approaching Stankonia, The Black Album, College Dropout or even the most recent Clipse release. That’s because for all of Lil Wayne’s charisma, star power and work ethic, he isn’t a very inventive or interesting lyricist. He’s good at projecting “I’m a totally badass, if not slightly crazy motherfucker” but not that good at expressing it.

With Jay-Z simply treading old ground, Kanye going pop, 50 turning shitty and TI getting into acting and going to jail, Wayne was able to dramatically up his profile by releasing more than 50 tracks in 2007. Because of the proliferation of mix tapes, internet only releases and remixes that could all be posted on hip-hop blogs, Wayne made the appearance of being everywhere at once and of dominating the game. But with a real album, people are going to expect some consistency and a remarkably high average level of quality, something that Wayne hasn’t really been able to deliver.