Lil Wayne Is Being Himself, And Himself Is Hilarious

Is it too glib to say Lil Wayne is rap’s David Bowie? He might play for both teams (although he definitely doesn’t, he’s got four kids by three women) and he just made a record called I’m Not A Human Being.

I could have written that sentence for Q Magazine.

The actual fact of the matter is that Lil Wayne would crush David Bowie in a Who’s A Fruitier Weirdo? contest without looking up from ESPN. David Bowie had a very studied, art school approach to being weird, he pretty much went ‘what’s the definition of weird?’ and then went ‘ok, I’m that’, he’s weird on purpose, Lil Wayne is weird because he’s a freak.

Isn’t it great that a freak’s the new king of rap and he toppled that monosyllabic, gym addicted jock, 50 Cent? It’s nice to have a real weirdo bothering the top 40. You can tell Lady Gaga’s doing it the Bowie way and she’s just a prudent businesswoman -it’s still good to thrust oddness into the face of the boring and normal general public, but with her it probably doesn’t come from any genuine unhinged-ness.

(opening track on the new record)

There’s a million things that point to Lil Wayne having a fascinating, creative and hilarious brain, but there’s no need to paraphrase Wikipedia. I Am Not A Human Being starts with a song called Gonerrhea and ends with a song called Bill Gates, maybe Eminem would do that but he’s in the Bowie camp of studied weirdoes (like his dumbdumb forbearers Insane Clown Posse) and he also insists on acting tough all the time. Lil Wayne is who he is, he’s being himself, and himself is pretty hilarious.

There’s a thing called Spotify that has made all written descriptions of music redundant and pompous, so go there to hear how fucking weird his creepy little vocoded voice is and listen to all the horrible, freaky little lines he manages to squeeze into an album that is primarily a collection of sincere love songs. He’s fucking incredible, and he’s not even trying.

Rap’s had some great weirdoes in its time: RA The Rugged Man, Brotha Lynch Hung and recently the mighty OFWGKTA kids are good examples of fruity characters (leave other good examples in the comments box plz), but none of those sort of guys have ever graced the top 40 anywhere.

A weirdo had to happen to mainstream rap, every possible combination of weird has been done to death in rock music, nothing can be pushed forward there, it’s fucking dead and has been since the turn of the century. Because of that, we’ve had a bit of a weirdness void in the mainstream, no one to rescue fun people from the idiots by showing them that strangeness can get you far. Enter Dwayne Carter and his hilarious rhymes about being him.

Lil Wayne is like Bowie in that he’s a beacon of hope to a bunch of kids who are trapped in their rooms thinking they’re the only ones who do the weird and fruity things they do. Bowie pulled a generation of homos from the closet, Weezy is going to pull a generation of weirdoes from the weirdo equivalent of the closet, which might be the wardrobe, the weirdo wardrobe.

Just think about all the rap fans in their formative years who thought the only way they could be into that stuff was if they were big tough alpha males with dark pasts and linear thought patterns, but when they heard Lil Wayne they realized there was a whole world of non sequiturs and erratic but ultimately charming behaviour out there for them? He’s freeing weirdoes from the chains of oppression by making it ok for young urban (and of course -rap’s primary market- suburban) males to be odd, fun and hilarious.

As with all great fruit de la toot weirdoes, he also thinks he might be Jesus. Have a read of weezythanxyou.com, the primary online resource for letters from Weezy in prison. He writes with a gravitas and sincerity that will make you sob tears of both laughter and sadness. Preach Weezy, Preach!! He’s a great rapper, but he’s also the best pop star in the world.

“We up in this bitch like tampons”