I think it’s fair to say that there’s very few singular superstars in hip-hop music that have had as many stylistic incarnations as Lil Wayne. Most artists make these Frankenstein versions of themselves, stitching new styles upon older styles and creating new life. For Wayne, we’ve seen drastic mutations that all but abandon what’s come before, like an alien insect’s metamorphosis. From his being nurtured in the Hot Boyz, to learning from his contemporaries on the East Coast, he honed distinct styles; mastered delivery, mic presence, and effortlessly constructed flows and lurid metaphors. Then, after emerging victorious from a tsunami of leaks and accumulating a laundry list of commercial and critical accolades from Tha Carter III, Lil Wayne was left in a turbulent place. From ‘07 to his eventual incarceration in 2010 he had battled legal issues, and his third Dedication mixtape was really more of a Young Money compilation tape than a Lil Wayne mixtape. At that point in time Wayne seemed to be trading his “Best Rapper Alive” hat in favor of his “Young Money General” hat. In hindsight, listening to a Young Money song was like watching Dragonball Z; the side characters were there to stall in time so the main characters could save them, and by extension us. Gudda Gudda was a rap Yamcha, but it was exciting to see someone in their grocery bag at the time. YMCMB was in this weird space where they were hipster rappers for relatively normal people. Other collectives around that time had rigid, defined aesthetics but Young Money wasn’t as skater oriented and rebellious as OFWGKTA, or as gritty and stylized as an A$AP Mob. They weren’t region specific, and unlike say, MMG, they had a look the average person could emulate. YMCMB was perfect for the average kid. You could hear it in the music. Drake’s So Far Gone was relatable, vulnerable, and tugged on teenage heartstrings and Nicki Minaj had rightfully assumed the title of Queen of Hip Hop with Beam Me Up Scotty earlier in 2009. YMCMB had already started to impact music in huge ways, despite their top heavy roster. And so, amid leaks earlier that month, on Halloween of all days, a new Weezy emerged from his UFO not just stylistically, but aesthetically. No Ceilings was the harbinger of his newest change.
Some things were the same. Wayne was still abducting beats and leaving them marked with his own quirky crop circles. At 13, you couldn’t tell me “Swag Surf” wasn’t a Lil Wayne song with a cover by some other guys. Wayne’s moderately complicated relationship with New York was still in the honeymoon phase (“Banned From TV” and “Throw It It”) while his relationship with Jay-Z, which was similarly knotted but mostly based on admiration, continued with “DOA” and “Run This Town.” My favorite Weezy-ism, the intentionally mispronounced word, is also present and accounted for. As a carry over from Da Drought 3 days, there’s the weird pop radio cover. This time around seeing Gnarls Barkley succeeded by the Black Eyed Peas. At the same time, so much was different, which is a positive and sometimes a bit of a snag. Despite acknowledging the idea of “The Death Of Autotune” by covering his idol's latest single, the autotune stylings dating back to The Dedication 3 are intact. Wayne’s “DOA” is actually a great microcosm for his approach to rhyming across the tape. The schemes and punchlines are a bit more simple and less outlandish than say Da Drought 3, but you can hear how much fun Wayne is having. Da Drought 3 is debatably his best rapping and on that mixtape he comes off as a master magician in charge of a captivated audience.
I maintain the belief that in that ‘06-’08 Lil Wayne was probably the most natural rapper ever in how casually he could transition from flows, his delivery, his mic presence, personality; he could do anything. No Ceilings is a man who has has everything, whose time is ticking, but just decides “fuck it.” And it works so well. He name drops the coroner of New Orleans on “Run This Town” and on “Wasted” he refers to a little league on an island off the coast of Venezuela (apparently they’re really good): "If we gon' do it, dog, let's do it now/I—I—I am more animal than the zoo allow/Put me in the wild, I’ll be there for a while/You niggas Little League, call 'em Curaçao.” "Wasted" is actually chock full of fun sports references to Usain Bolt, Jalen Rose, and the NOLA Super-Dome. On “DOA” he ditches the connective tissue and gives us a live look at him constructing insanity with lines like “Ugh, Fiji water, grandaddy purp/Excuse me, I let the semi-automatic burp,” and “Ugh, I'm about to go walnuts/We get seven-digit money, you could call us/Hit 'em with the chopper, watch 'em ball up/Paint your face red, you all dolled up.” Meanwhile in each verse he has these recurring themes for the start of new ideas that are disparate. The first one is set off with Fiji water and a new strain of weed, and the second is what kind of nuts he’s about to go. It’s the difference between early and Cubist Picasso. Simultaneously, his voice is higher, creakier, and raspier, stretching like putty into weird melodies and chopier flow patterns. He’s a martian after all, but he’s right at home on the beats, no phone necessary.
My favorite performance is “Run This Town”, which puts the original to shame aside from the amazing Kanye feature. From letter wordplay to open the song to couplets like “You softer than ny-lin; oops, I meant "nylon"/Perfection is the goal, and I’m headed to the pylon/Crown fit me good, I ain’t even got to try on/The pistol mean business—that bitch should have a tie on”. There’s a sense of urgency that builds up and explodes by the end of the track. “Run This Town” is also true to the Young Money General’s story at the time with a long shout out of the entire YM roster. Even while having fun and coloring outside the lines, Wayne is doing his best to set his army up for success in the wake of his exile, and in some ways acknowledging his own journey there. The song ends with an almost retrospective view and a few ideas going forward. “I’m the prodigy—do you roger me?/I look in the flames and see a hotter me/But how come I’m still colder than common-ly?/Yeah, we run this town, like a lot of feet/Young Mula, baby; I'm proud of me.” The goal of YM’s success and the prospect of prison hang over his head for the beginning of the remixed smash Waka Flocka Flame hit “O Let’s Do It,” but by the end it seems like he’s talking to himself about the latter: “Weezy F, the "F" is for "Fuck what you’re going through"/Make your people mourn you.” It seems that in giving the people a new Weezy fully committed to a new style, they can mourn an old version or love the music and mourn his absence as he does his bid. Either way, the old Wayne was gone, and he knew it before even we did.
The New Wayne-1000 Model had its own issues. Not all of the bars landed. “I'm the hardest shit, go in your ass and search,” “Oh, she a good girl? I got her transforming/She give me hot head, I call it "global warming” and “Looking for a bad bitch, I give her dinosaur dick” look and sound worse than they are because they’re all standalones. The idea being presented is no longer part of a larger theme; now it’s a big blot in the painting. The jokes about the poop obsessed, pussy devouring Gremlin was a phenomenon that came from this tape, along with the limits of punchline style raps all together. We can only take so much “Young Money, we the shit like weak stomachs,” and commands to the listener to dig in their asses. This is also the point where you start to realize just how much influence Drake had on Wayne. The master was learning from the student, down to the little stutter adlibs and stretching the end of lines into a melody. It’s hard to put into words, but “Wayne On Me” and “I’m Single” are 2009 Drake songs with a cosmic twist. To this day I can’t figure out if Drake was mistakenly credited on “I’m Single” or if he actually just gave Wayne the song. The synthesis of the Wanye-O-Morph was starting to become less seamless. We also have to tolerate him dragging some of his YM protégés across the finish line on these songs. Gudda Gudda’s verse on Break Up is so bad you can’t help but laugh; he drops stinker after stinker with lines like “Your bitch under my sheets, I heard she was an undercover ho (Ha)” and “I do her something rude, I pop her like balloons” which actually predates *that* Ludacris bar. It feels like a parent participating in a father-daughter dance when Wayne starts off his verse on “That’s All I Have” saying he doesn’t even like the beat. The things you do for your kids right?
Despite its flaws, No Ceilings is arguably his most influential incarnation when you look at modern music. Wayne is a rapper whose canon is incomplete without considering the impact of his mixtapes. A botched streaming release can’t give you the scope of a tape like No Ceilings. The Robb Bank$, Tony Shnnows and early Young Thugs of the world wouldn’t exist if the previous version of Wayne was the last one. Young Thug, from 2015-2019 for example, took the No Ceilings mantra to heart, throwing all the rules out the window to mostly great effect. The difference between their journeys is that Wayne was at his core carried a traditionalist approach, following the “you have to learn the rules before you can break them,” doctrine. In doing so, he gave other artists, big or small, a blueprint and a mantra to do whatever they wanted. But he didn’t know that at the time. In 2009 Lil Wayne just knew that despite a prison bid on the horizon, he had a stable of promising young artists, and he was having fun. His freewheeling ethos led to a misguided rock album. He would start getting into skating shortly after No Ceilings, a move that was heavily criticized for whatever reason. They called him a poser, called him too old. It didn’t matter. In the outro skit he reminds us how much fun he’s having and answers all the “whys”. Because he’s Weezy, he’s different. The sky was the limit. And he had no ceilings.
Best Song: “Run This Town”
Best Beat: “Throw It In The Bag”
Best Moments: “Swagger just dumb; call me Sarah Palin” made me laugh out loud on an airplane / The Devin The Dude stray was crazy / “Banned From TV” existing
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