Yeah I understand the confusion amongst some of you all. I mean the wire magazine put his last mixtape on their best of...The Wire?

At any rate, DEDICATION 3 is a pretty mixtape. But I think that's Drama's fault. It reminds me of one of those 2pac or Biggie albums where they salvaged a lost verse and then added 3 minutes of someone else rapping to beef it up. The big problem being the lack of Wayne on the tape, really. There's way too much of Wayne's Young Money Millionaire's, which would have been fine had this been released as y'know, one of those like Lil Wayne & Crew tapes. The letdown is in calling it the 3rd in the DEDICATION series, where the first 2 were such highlights of Wayne.

I dn't really give a flying ass what Pfork or the Wire or some boarder who used to like 90's rap or whatever thinks or says. Wayne is a really brilliant, talented and dedicated artist. If it's cool to be indie but listen to mainstream rap and then dissassociate when dude drops a bad mixape (hello! FREE outtakes!) then I guess I'm through being cool.

dedication 3 is terrible...honestly. I'm a big Lil' Wayne fan too. It basically consists of him using auto-tune non-stop and other rappers rapping

Yeah i really do hope he drops the auto-tune thing soon... he's been all over that on his recent guest spots.

I mean so far I can't complain quality wise.. but I really dont want him to just use that all the time

It works sometimes. On The Game's single it worked very well for the chorus. But once he starts using it while he's rapping a verse, it ends up sounding so bad. It's sad because I usually play his mixtapes non stop. Especially Da Droughts.

I agree that it sounds great on the Game single. It usually sounds okay to me, but the track over "Whatever You Like" inst. on DEDICATION 3 is horrible.

I dunno... if I was an elitist I would have more confidence in my own judgement, I would have listened to Lil Wayne's music and thought it was disappointing and moved on. Instead I'm deferring my own judgement to other people's, thinking that they're right and I must be missing something (I don't really think the world is full of robots and I'm the only one who can see through the matrix or some bullshit).

I think intellectually 'slumming it' is worse than elitism anyway. Some music is just fucking dumb. I heard a Notorious BIG song a few days ago and he was rhyming about cumming on his stomach and having a prostitute lick it up. In a few years time someone will propose doing Notorious BIG studies at a shitty university and some professor guy will say 'no way, that music is dumb - and stop saying he's a poet' and he will be accused of being a stuffy elitist.

Does Hip Hop really need another rapper chatting endlessly about how hard he has it, how virile he is and how amazing his mum is?

psh.

Fair enough. But really, does it?

The same thinking attempted to condemn "Howl" as well.

nice! Just like how I only listen to 80's rock when I need my fixation of rock music because all the rest is shit anyway.



Lil' Wayne has great potential, just hasn't been executing it properly lately. And some of his mixtapes are great. Lyrically and vocally speaking, he's groundbreaking. Many rappers have tired sounds now and can't pull off what Wayne can. A good part of CIII has fresh ideas like Dr. Carter, and the DJ SCREW south style "A Millie".

Seems like many of you need to start reading Cocaine Blunts and get a more dynamic perspective of rap.

Criticising Lil Wayne needn't have anything to do with nostalgia for some mythical mid-90s rap past (although it's revealing that, when LW describes himself as the best rapper alive, its to that era that he himself draws comparison with.) As an MC he does have skill in terms of flow, but its the cliched lyrics rather than their delivery that let him down. If he could grow out of that then the hype might eventually be justified but right now I just think he's a bit of a case of loads of style but very little actual substance.


I don't think NWRA or anyone else is trying to 'condemn' rappers like Biggie or Lil Wayne, so much as calling into question the validity of certain aspects of their work. Everyone knows that rap is never going to win awards for political correctness but if people can't find issue with it on any level then what's the point of even discussing it? My own view is that while gangster rap provided hip hop with a great, and much needed, kick in the arm in the 80s, it has since then come to overly define it, effectively eliminating a whole tradition of rap that goes back to artists like Whodini and Biz Markie. There's nothing wrong with rapping about guns, hoes and bling but I do think that there's now such an overemphasis on these topics that many people are beginning to think of them as being somehow synonymous with the genre.

yr good, Inhuman. CB is a great blog. And yr take on Wayne is spot on.

[quote=Inhuman]nice! Just like how I only listen to 80's rock when I need my fixation of rock music because all the rest is shit anyway.
quote]

i will have to disagree with you there.

hahaha

Oh, speaking of WFB, today's song is hot for once, AND the auto tune actually sounds good
http://allhiphop.com/stories/multime.../20720152.aspx

and i knew you were being sarcastic.

haha I know