In 2008, Lil Wayne was the heavyweight champion of hip-hop and, one could argue, of popular music in general. Having built anticipation for his theoretically legacy-capturing album Tha Carter III to and beyond the boiling point via a tireless, years-long campaign of stunning mixtape tracks and buzzing radio guest appearances, he finally dropped the record, tat-faced baby cover and all, to a generally rapturous critical and commercial reception.
Achieving the now-monumental first-week sales of over a million units, Wayne proved a rare and shining light among the ever-dimming fortunes of the mainstream record business. While the buoy provided by the mammoth, talent-betraying radio hit “Lollipop” was crucial, what predominantly pushed Wayne’s success over the hump was the long-cultivated, supernova ascent of his persona. In the period leading up to Tha Carter III’s release he benefited from a combination of public attention that is proving basically essential for hopeful career hip-hop artists (see T.I., Kanye, The Game and many others in recent years); he was dominant in street mixtapes, frequently present on mainstream radio and adored by both legitimate hip-hop press like XXL and indie-creed-defining hubs like Pitchfork. The last of these can realistically be credited with the most critical relationship to the evolution of the concept of Wayne as avant-garde pop artist and his (and his management’s) understanding that this emphasis could prove powerful in dominating the audiences that happily bend to such taste-making sources.
Like most successfully eccentric pop stars, Wayne’s character is composed of potentially contradictory but effectively galvanizing elements—he is both a molten pile of id and a shrewd and calculating craftsman of his own public image. Last year in interviews he made reference to his management’s direction that he study and adapt the lessons of Prince, another commercially conquering iconoclast, and understand the potency of his “unique voice.” And, indeed, even as the recent past has found Wayne’s strangeness grown ever more fearless and expansive—the last year has included everything from hyping his forthcoming rock band Bad Ass Grasshopper to starring in aggressively homoerotic condom ads to playing guitar alongside Kid Rock at the Country Music Awards—it has also come to possess an air of polish. His hoarse giggle has become its own branding signifier and his character-defining catchphrases (“We are not the same/ I am a Martian”) have been threaded throughout his verses again and again to ensure and strengthen the listener’s recognition of the tenets of “Lil Wayne.”
The eccentric celebrity has always thrived in times of social conservatism; brooding Marlon Brando and the early rock ‘n’ roll lunatics serviced the 1950s just as Prince, Michael Jackson and countless others did the Reagan era. Wayne then should prove a fitting pop culture champion for the dank twilight of the Bush years, but he seems a man wracked with conflict between the role of eccentric art jester and the lure of the throne of pop.
Even as he’s thoroughly embraced the electric power of eccentricity and fancied himself a goblin and an alien, he appears on magazine covers emblazoned with the legend “I Am Hip-Hop” and even recently updated his face ink with the inscription “I Am Music,” suggestions that he considers himself much more than an artful outsider. Unlike the modernist Brando or the borderline-humping Prince, the decidedly postmodern path of Lil Wayne may be one that completely demands this kind of self-fracturing; but unlike either of those older gods, Wayne has proven unable to keep his work at a consistently excellent level through what is the likely renaissance of his artistic career.
After a comparatively quiet few months on the heels of Tha Carter III, Wayne recently dropped his first genuinely important mixtape release for some time in Tha Drought Is Over 6. Another monument to ostentatious aesthetics (the cover finds Wayne holding his recently born son wrapped in a Bloods bandana and assailed by Max Payne–aping dark angels) the record finds Wayne at a crossroads at which he has been stalled for some time. He, perhaps unintentionally illustrates this hesitancy of purpose on the mixtape’s intro, unveiling his newest pop culture oblique strategy. On “The Reincarnation,” he describes his intention to release his next album of new material also under the title Tha Carter III, as it will be a more experimental venture, and he doesn’t want to potentially alienate any mainstream fans. As he mumbly intones, “I don’t know when we’re gonna release Tha Carter IV now. We want Carter IV to be what everybody want Carter IV to be and…some people are not gonna like this [next album], and I don’t want them to not like Tha Carter IV.”
While the actual logistical viability of such a plan may be questionable, it’s clear that Wayne is still trying to engage with the world of hip-hop as a keen strategist, but he’s unable to reconcile his artistic aspirations and gme-dominating ambitions into a cogent career path. Tha Drought Is Over 6 gives ample voice to both sides of this battle, ranging from energizing opener “I’m A Monster,” which finds Wayne flipping perhaps the most iconic line of his recent flame (“I am the beast/ feed me rappers or feed me beats”) into a weirdly winning David Bowie-esque chorus, to more auto-tuned flab like “Shootout.”
This widening division was fatal to the quality control of what should, perhaps for now, safely be referred to as the Original Tha Carter III, a record that found ravenous lyrical and stylistic roaming right alongside soul-draining, radio-baiting dreck. The ultimate artistic failure of “Lollipop” was not in its simplicity or pop aspersions, but that it found Wayne a rank-and-file follower of the zeitgeist’s convention rather than a guiding force. Wayne wants to be liked and wants to be the most financially successful and beloved figure in hip-hop, but he also needs to be the illest and most thrilling craftsman, worthy of the title he has draped on himself for the past few years: “Best Rapper Alive.” In some ways, this inner conflict and motivational turmoil can be seen as one of the most elemental threads in all of hip-hop history, but rarely has it found as clear and definitive an avatar as Lil Wayne stands today.
