Lil Wayne - Rebirth (2010)
Often held up as Lil Wayne's "Encore", this awkward as fuck attempt to branch out into rock isn't just bad, it's fucking stupid because you -know- he won't have that same crossover appeal to rock as rappers like Eminem and.. Well, wouldn't you look at that, the fact that I can only think of -maybe- Eminem being able to pull it off (not saying it'd be good, just saying that it'd at least be okay at its best) should say something about just how odd this really is. With this album, Lil Wayne successfully made an album for -nobody- but himself, considering that Lil Wayne fans probably don't like a terrible lot of rock, and not many rock fans would be eager to check out an album by Lil Wayne no matter what the fucking genre is, and for good reason: Generic rock riffs with vocals that were slathered in autotune? I love a fair bit of Lil Wayne's work and even as a moderate fan without much emotionally invested in Lil Wayne, I'm not really interested in -any- bit of that. A friend had shown me "Prom Queen (feat. Shanell)" back in 2009 and I was legitimately convinced that it was a joke: Someone with a similar voice to Lil Wayne's recorded themselves being a jackass over some generic guitar riffs. I couldn't believe it was actually real.. But lo and behold, it was.
Is Lil Wayne mentally stuck in high school or something? I love my share of pop-punk bands but NONE of them explicitly talk about high school the way that Lil Wayne does on this album, specifically high school romance, which makes you think that with all of the bitches this guy has had, there must have been one fucking KILLER girl he met in high school to still be reminiscing about her years later, but something that's actually pretty interesting on this album are the times that Lil Wayne talks about politics, how fucked the world is, and this specific part in "Paradice" that you'd swear were some Kendrick Lamar lyrics on paper: "Call me crazy, I've been called worse. It's like I have it all, but what's it all worth? Ha ha, I'm probably better in my afterlife. I should cherish life but this just ain't paradise" what the fuck?? That isn't fucking poetry of the highest regard but isn't this the guy who mainly raps about eating pussy? It makes you wonder what Lil Wayne could get across lyrically if he could muster up the energy to give a shit about getting a specific message out to his audience.
Believe it or not, despite the lackluster guitar riffs and autotuned-to-fuck vocals, I don't think this is fucking horrible, I think it's just generic (well, as generic as the concept of "rapper attempts rock" can be) and generally uninspired, and even more surprisingly, "Drop the World (feat. Eminem)" is the track on here I dislike the most just because of how obnoxious it is, and the fact that Eminem's verse does absolutely nothing to me. While we're on the subject of surprising shit about this album.. Did you know there are some pop-punk tunes on here? No, I'm not fucking shitting you, Lil Wayne fucking LOVES pop-punk apparently, going as far as to reference Green Day's "Basket Case" in "Hot Revolver (feat. Dre)", bragging repeatedly about having a Travis Barker feature on "One Way Trip (feat. Kevin Rudolf)", and.. I fucking shit you not.. Managing to crank out a pretty okay pop-punk tune with Nicki Minaj in "Knockout (feat. Nicki Minaj)", it's actually pretty fucking decent!! Sure, there are more "why did you do that?" moments on here than enjoyable ones, but I don't think this is even nearly as bad as people make it out to be.. It's just fucking weird and absolutely no one wanted it, just like me!!
5/10
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Feel free to check out the song previews/buy this album using my Amazon Associate link!
