Fighter: Lil Wayne
Trainer: DJ Drama/Gangsta Grillz
Cut Men: DJ Spinz, Lifted, Mike Dean, Kanye West, Key Wayne, Jahlil Beats, Sarom, Streetrunner, Young Chop, Mike Will, Hit-Boy, Outkast, The Beat Bully, KE, Sonny Digital, EZ Elpee, Chase Davis and others
Weight Class: Rap Heavyweight
Notable Fire: Burn, Green Ranger (Feat. J. Cole), Cashed Out
Notable Trash: Magic, Get Smoked, Same Damn Tune
Tale of the Tape: We told you two weeks ago that Weezy’s Dedication 4 mixtape could be make or break for him with many of his fans. Well the mixtape is out, and delivers about what was to be expected. “Mitt Dramney” made a concerted effort to give Wayne every opportunity to be successful by letting Wayne spit over all of the summer’s hottest songs. Cashing Out, I Don’t Like, Burn, Mercy, No Lie (to name a few) were all featured tracks on D4, a move that came off equally shrewd and desperate. If I were LIl Wayne and I wanted to silence all of my critics with a dope mixtape, I’d start by getting all of the same beats too. But the fact that Wayne had to use those songs as a built in crutch of sorts seemed to indicate that this project was lacking.
I actually went back and listened to Dedication 2 in preparation of this Tale of the Tape. Listen to how Wayne is talking on this interlude:
Wayne speaks of the importance of being “dedicated” to his craft and why he believes he is the best rapper alive. That was nearly six years ago to the day. In 2012, Tune is dropping punchlines such as (this will save you some time if you haven’t heard it yet):
Track 1- “Man, kill everybody but the babies/Give that bitch nigga the blues ’til he fucking navy”
Track 2- “For the same damn crime, I’ll murder this time/Potato on the end of the barrel, french fries”
Track 4- “Hope your barbershop open, cuz we got hair triggers/Smoke so much that Smokey the Bear, have to bear with us”
Track 8- “My hoes lift up their shirts/I’m high as Captain Kirk/If we run out of work/We Rob…like Bert” (WORST PUNCHLINE OF THE YEAR!)
Track 10- “I’m from the N.O./Stretch niggas out like limos/That uzi go ‘zit, zit, zit, zit, zit, zit, zit’, that’s pimples”
Track 11- “Left hand on that steering wheel/Right hand on my 9 mili/T rolled my blunt long as a lifespan/Then I kill it”
Track 13- “‘Poof’, there go my roof/’Pow’, there go my hammer/Come around here stuntin’/Get Jacked, like O’ Lantern” (BOOOOOOO!!!)
Track 13- “Two times for them haters/Headshots for them snitches/If the best things in life are free/Then why the fuck we pay attention?”
To drop these wack rhymes repeatedly on the same project is just irresponsible and smacks of complacency and laziness. Furthermore, punchlines lose their impact if you use them constantly. And while there were some bright spots on the mixtape, “Shoot yo ass 100 times and stand over ya/Lil Tunechi so fly, I got arachnophobia”, there just weren’t enough to offset The Birdman Effect.
Sidebar: The Birdman Effect is simply my own explaination I’ve concocted to explain Wayne’s lyrical falloff. He’s simply spent too much time around Birdman all these years and consequently has turned into “A Game Spitter”.
Fight Night: Loss By Unanimous Decision
The main reason this is not knockout loss for Tunechi is because this work is par for the course for him in 2012. In a vacuum, it’s not terrible. It’s not terrible if you are 18-years-old and have only been listening to rap music for five years and all the exposure you have to Wayne is post Tha Carter III. But if you remember Wayne from the early 2000s through Tha Carter II, you are still disappointed.
This mixtape is riddled with punchlines that Bone Crusher thinks are trash. I also don’t care to hear a child rap about gunplay, throwing money in the club and banging chicks (even if the beat is kinda hot). I don’t even care if he really is bout that life, I have no interest in hearing it (Watch that video and then read some of the comments. My favorite: “Hit the club…What club nigga? The Boys and Girls Club?!?”). The most depressing part is we all know Lil Wayne is capable of so much more, but there just weren’t enough hot bars in between the oral sex references and Truck Fit commercials.
Sidebar: This is my brother’s take on Dedication 4, “15 songs about eating pussy, zero songs about getting money. I don’t even know this dude anymore.” This is hilarious because it’s so true. If you like hearing about a guy going down on women for an hour, then D4 is the mixtape for you!
Sidebar to the Sidebar: Is Truck Fit available in stores? And if so, are cats actually rockin it? I find it hard to believe Wayne will be able to pull this off this late in the game. The clothing line thing has been done by rappers for over 10 years now. Hov, Diddy, 50 Cent, Tip, Nelly, Outkast, among others, have all taken a crack at it with varying degrees of success. Why now after all these years is Wayne launching a line? Why not when he was at the peak of his powers in 2008? And who wants to take fashion cues from a guy who dresses like this?
So this is how Bloods dress now? Word? I don’t think so. #NotGangsta
The overreaction of Nicki’s Mitt Romney line aside, there wasn’t much all that memorable from this mixtape. For now, listening to Dedication 4 when you’re on your way to the club or playing Weezy’s old material appears to be the move.
It’s all good though. The moral of the story is, when you’re listening to Lil Wayne and you think you’ve lowered your expectations appropriately, go ahead and lower that bar just a little bit more.