Blogging on Meds

…nee, it’s Wayne’s world!

Weezy shocks world! En route to a million sold in first week, Tha Carter 3 shatters industry estimates, proves there’s no such thing as over-exposure. Where’s the Rolling Stone cover? Meet 08’s biggest artist…

Wayne jams with Baby on ‘Leather So Soft” at Beacon Theater summer 07. Rolling Stone dropped the ball and had The Eagles on the cover this week, so here’s a sweet XXL cover…  

A year ago, if someone told me that in 365 days a black guy would have the Democratic nomination, the Celtics would be one win from a championship, and Lil Wayne would sell a million records in the first week and have the number 1 song in the country—about getting blow jobs nonetheless—I’d have laughed. But it’s all true. America’s not so bad. Ha…

I’ve been following New Orelans’ Cash Money Millionaires for a decade (Baller Blockin’ is my favorite movie after Citizen Kane). Ever since Juvenile’s “Ha” brought “bounce” music mainstream, Cash Money’s been my shiite, and this is by far the highest they’ve gone. Lil Wayne is a bonafide pop megastar! Let’s chart the rise and rise of Lil Wanye…

Flashback: June 22nd, 2007, Lil Wayne’s first-ever New York performance. Sold out. The Beacon Theater, a tri-deck Art Deco jewel, is packed with 3500 fans. It’s 10pm, and Wayne’s two hours late. No one thinks he’s going to show—even DJ Kahled, who came up from Miami with Wayne.

Twenty more minutes pass. The lights go down. Adolescent female screams.  Wayne bounds onstage in a blinged out RUN DMC shirt, dreadlocks flopping. “Yalls motherf*cking po-lice almost didn’t let me in the building,” Wayne’s first words, sounding stressed. “I love ya’ll. But fuck ya’ll police.”

Standing on stage right: Wayne’s mentor, Brian “Baby” Williams, a plump, um, baby looking guy, who with his brother Ronald aka “Slim” started Cash Money Records. Along with a few hundred others, Baby’s nodding along to Wayne’s anti-NYPD rant like a proud father. (Later, it was revealed that NYPD didn’t want to let Baby in.)

In the late 90s, Cash Money sold 20 million albums. But Baby and Slim entered the 2000s with artists defecting by the truck-load. Even gifted Cash Money beat-maker Mannie Fresh left the tribe. And Cash Money seemed to be fading.

Then, in December 2005, Weezy released Tha Carter 2 on Cash Money. A superb effort, TC2 earned Wayne critical praise and sold a million copies. Before TC2, Wayne was considered a Cash Money’s funny sideshow—the little kid from the Hot Boys.

In October 2006, Wayne and Baby, now calling himself Birdman, released a 20-track collaborative effort, “Like Father Like Son.” The LP’s lead single, “Stuntin’ Like My Dady,” with its machine-gun beat and rapid fire lyrics, blew up. A video of Baby and Wayne making out was YouTubed 6 million times. “Like Father Like Son” sold 350,000 albums in its first week without a major promotion campaign. Wayne’s moment had officially arrived. Katrina had just hit. World focus was on New Orleans, though Wayne and Birdman were exiled to South Beach.

“Like Father Like Son” is one of the best rap albums ever recorded. It doesn’t get the credit it desrves. Yes, it sold well, and Wayne and Baby won peoples’ choice at both the BET and Vibe awards. Still, “Like Father Like Son” was overlooked by the critical and blogging masses. People said Baby can’t rap, but that’s bullshit. Tell me “Leather So Soft,” “1st Key,” ”Know What I’m Doin (feat Dick Ross),” “Over Here Hustlin,” and “Get That Money” aren’t great songs. The album’s unprecedented combination of post-soul/R&B meets Miami electro beats and crazed New Orleanian word-play were set to take over the world.

2007 came with Wayne releasing a series of genre-defining mixtapes. White people started downloading the mixtapes. White people started hyping Weezy. Weezy responded by recording ever-weirder and druggier tracks and remixes. By June 2007, Wayne fever had GQ Magazine calling him the “Best Rapper Alive.”

So there I was at the Beacon, summer 07, Wayne on stage. Rap shows usually suck, and my expectations were gauged as such. But over the next 90 minutes I saw a once-in-a-lifetime performance by a 24-year-old high on drugs, in his prime, with an ego boiling out of the medium-sized Beacon.

When 3500 New Yorkers are singing along to mixtape verses in Creole recorded over other peoples’ songs, you know you’re witnessing something unique. The guests—Kayne, Juelz, Ja Rule (!?), Baby—paraded out, but none outshined Wayne, whose set just kept building. By the end of the night, Wayne, shirtless and dripping sweat, sat in a chair jamming on guitar.

After the show, Wayne’s tour bus was pulled over by NYPD, likely because he berated the cops onstage. He was arrested for possession of an unlicensed hand gun and a half-pound of marijuana. Who was this guy?

He was the only man ever to be featured on a full page of The New Yorker smoking a blunt. He recorded and released 75 free songs in one year. He signed a management deal with HipHop Since 1978, Kayne’s guys. He was arrested again and again. He was a guest on every song. 

And here we are. Tha Carter 3. Music industry experts estimated a 500-600k first week sales. But behind the power of the country’s number 1 song, “Lollipop,” one of the strangest, best summer jams ever—a droning, jittery, raunchy futuristic ode to head that begins with a “No homo” declaration and ends with a “Call me so I can make it juicy for ya”—Wayne has the biggest opening week of 2008. I’m not going to review the record. Anthony did a brilliant job with that earlier this week.

Instead, let’s look at how the record ends. Quoting “some white guy on TV”, Wayne says, not raps, “1 in 9 black guys are locked up…the money we spend on sending young ass to jail is the same it would cost to send kids to college…” before launching into a theory on racist drug policy and ending with a tirade against Al Sharpton calling him “Don King with a perm.”  

A comic socio-political essay to close a pop/rap album? Once again I’m left wondering, who is this guy? Right now he’s the biggest artist in America. Bigger than anyone ever thought. And I can’t wait to see what he does with his new-found cultural capital.