Lil Wayne is a genius, if one of an especially specific kind. He doesn't ever know when to stop; his albums are all overlong, and this one (22 tracks in about 80 minutes) is no exception. It's hard to sit through the whole thing, but this is probably due less to the quality of the songs, which are excellent, than Wayne's enervating, scattershot delivery. This thing is huge, and in the pantheon of Epic Rap Albums it surely beats the previous year's
Purple Haze, by Cam'ron. While Cam'ron seemed to be an average rapper who, through luck, managed to hook up with some excellent producers, Lil' Wayne always seems in control. Everything on this album happens because he wanted it to happen. Listening to this album on random might even be better: it's not very well sequenced. It's basically just one track after another, so listening to each track one at a time, without the cumulative effect of 22 other tracks just like it, is the best way to find out how well-written the whole thing is and how fantastic the beats are. "Mo Fire"! Listen to that! Stevie Wonder himself couldn't have come up with a more ass-shaking beat than that one. Wayne's later work is more popular, but aside from the novelty value of throwing a nutcase like Lil' Wayne in the ring with mainstream guys like Robin Thicke, it has about one tenth the depth of this stuff. This is probably his best album: it sits right between the off-the-rails insanity of
Da Drought 3
and the pop-rap exercises of
Tha Carter III. If you have to buy one Lil Wayne album (and you really should) this is the one. He doesn't compare himself to a geese erection in this one, though. Too bad.
MY RATING:
8.1
Lil Wayne - "Mo' Fire"
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