Is Lil Wayne the best rapper alive?  If you’re asking us, the answer is no, but is our opinion the end all be all in this matter? The answer is certainly not. What constitutes good for one person may be completely different for another.  This is why we have opinions upon things, but normally even our opinions follow some basic logic.  If one were to ask us why we don’t like vegetables, we would respond because we don’t find their taste appealing to our senses. If someone were to ask us why we wouldn’t drive station wagons, it would be because station wagons are old, ugly, and outdated.  If someone were to ask us why we don’t like skydiving, we would say because we view it as scary and dangerous.  Basically everything follows reason to a certain extent; therefore, we can reasonably say that our opinions, to some extent, are based off logic or reason. We would also like to state that while there is such a thing as difference of opinion, there is also a thing called general opinion.  In general most people like ice cream and pizza, in general most guys find Halle Barry attractive, and in general most people want a high paying job with benefits. This is not because everyone randomly decides to like these things, for no reason, but because they fit the criteria of something they should like. For instance a high paying job gives people financial security, and Halle Barry has a symmetrical face and slim body, these are all things that general opinion says are good.  So, now the question arises, why is general opinion important?  General opinion is important because we can use it as a benchmark to judge things. In the following paragraphs, we will demonstrate how Lil Wayne does not meet any of the generally accepted criteria, needed to be considered a good rapper. In fact he fails at most of them.

      Now, when listening to rap, what are some of the generally accepted qualities we look for in the rapper and his music?  If we were to break it down, lyrics and flow would be a big part of the equation, as would the beats that are used, how relatable the rappers are, and how credible they are.  If you don’t agree, consider this:  There is a kid at your school whose dying ambition it is to be a rapper, yet his lyrics are horrid, have no meaning, and don’t rhyme.  Would you consider this individual to be a talented rapper? Doubtful.  If this same individual had good lyrics, but couldn’t change up their flow or much less stay on beat, would they be considered good?  Again, no.  Now, what if their beats were horrible, if he was rapping about an obscure subject at length, and if you found all of his raps to be falsified?  We are sure in all these cases, if you applied these standards to any aspiring rapper with no media attention, that you would deem them a bad rapper; therefore, we can say that “generally” these are things that we look for in a rapper, and the fact they fail at one or more of them necessitates the fact that they are not that great, much less the best. Now, what if all these things applied to Lil Wayne?

      We would now like to diverge from this point to state that no, we are not jealous of Lil Wayne. Nor are we “haters”, or any other overused comeback people usually throw at us.  While Lil Wayne is admired by many, he does not live a lifestyle that we would wish to emulate, being fairly religious people; furthermore, it cannot be said that we are “haters”, for “haters” hate on multiple things, without reason.  Instead our dislike for Lil Wayne stems from our belief that he is an individual devoid of rapping talent; therefore, logically we would not like him as a rapper. Lastly; If we were truly “haters” or jealous individuals, we would hate or be jealous of virtually everyone in the music industry at the moment, as they all, to a certain extent, share many of the same qualities. Why then, are we taking the time to write this?  Well, since Lil Wayne is all the rage now, we would like to not go through a laundry list of reasons why we don’t like him every time someone asks us; and a simple “We just don’t,” never pleases his fans.  Therefore, we have deemed it necessary to come up with a conclusive argument that we can refer the devout followers of Lil Wayne to, every time they challenge our assertions, or refute our claims.

      The first thing we’d like to prove is that Lil Wayne’s rise to fame is largely due to media attention and effective use of marketing, and in no way due to genuine talent. Lil Wayne is often hailed as a breakthrough new artist who rose to fame because of his incredible abilities and style. However, this impression Lil Wayne fans seem to have of him is false. Lil Wayne does not represent quality rap/hip-hop in any way, and the idea that his notoriety was gained through talent is wrong.

            Lil Wayne, or Dwayne Michael Carter, Jr., is not new to the rap scene at all. In fact, he has been around since 1997, and yet not until 2008 did he really, really make it big. So the idea that sheer talent quickly rocketed him to his current level of fame is obviously untrue. Lil Wayne began his career rapping with the rap group “Hot Boys”, which included extremely famous rappers such as Juvenile and B.G. There is no doubt that association with these big names must have brought him a lot of publicity. During the years before his first album, he was also featured on other albums with big name rappers, additionally adding to his name, but not necessarily his talent. Finally, in 1999 he released his first album “Tha Block is Hot” which did gain popular notice, and even got him a nomination as Best New Artist in Source magazine. Yet the album “featured significant contributions from Hot Boys”. So while this first release may seem like a proof of his greatness, Lil Wayne was yet to make an album truly solo. In fact his next two albums, arguably his first two solo ones, were considered by many to be disappointments, and many critics claim that he was “coasting on the fame and the collective success of Hot Boys” and that he showed a “lack of coherent narratives in his verse.”

      In 2004(with Tha Carter) he finally managed to again achieve some moderate success, on par with his debut, but it took FIVE years for him to make another popular album. After “Tha Carter”, from 2004-2008, Lil Wayne did nothing but make mixtapes and do singles with famous rappers, again simply widening his publicity base. He recorded singles with Chris Brown, Fat Joe, Lloyd, Rick Ross, Akon, Birdman, DJ Khaled, and Busta Ryhmes. After four years of working with a veritable army of famous rappers, Lil Wayne finally decided to release an album of his own. It wasn’t until 2008 with “Tha Carter III” that he became the rapper we know and love today. With his massive hit “Lollipop” Lil Wayne became one of the most famous rappers of our time, plaguing our radio stations hourly. But again, remember how many people he worked with, and how much publicity he needed to make himself such a phenomenon. Does this really sound like one of the most talented rappers of our time? Or simply the most connected?

      Now that it seems fairly established that Lil Wayne’s connections brought him most of his fame, let us examine why he needed so much media association to become a hit. Let’s examine his songs. To examine most of his songs would be a waste of time, since only a few singles even gained popular success, so his most famous and acclaimed song, Lollipop, should be a good place to start.

      The sad bit about Lollipop is that most of the catchy part of the song isn’t even him, its some guy singing a chorus (you know it, “shawty wanna thug, bottles in tha club…”), all the while Lil Wayne only contributes with a brilliant series of background “ya… ya… ya’s”. We’ll even say that the beat to this song is somewhat legit; however, Lil Wayne doesn’t use the decent beat to any great effect whatsoever. Pauses or filler noise are heard throughout the song, all in an effort to sort of stay on beat. Eleven years into his rapping career and he seems to still have issues with a beat. And let’s remember THIS is his BIG song. When examining other songs, his rapping issues become even more apparent, but we think our point here is proven.

      Another thing, do you ever hear Lil Wayne put inflection into his rapping? Not really. We are, for the sake of being a first hand source alone, listening to Lollipop and Got Money now, and it seems to us that all his parts have the same droning cadence which seems to entrance people. Rappers are supposed to at least sound emphatic about what they say, even if it’s really dumb, but Lil Wayne can’t seem to manage that. What’s more is that he doesn’t pronounce what he is saying. It would seem like saying things at a low, stately, drone would enhance his understandability, after all, most people not understanding rap lyrics complain that “*rapper name here* raps too fast for me to understand!” However, we’ve never heard that complaint with regards to Lil Wayne. Instead, we (and we’ve heard many others agree) state that we can barely understand what he is saying because he never really pronounces anything at all. This is the age of voice synthesizers and extremely high tech equipment, and we do not understand how he can’t at least synthesize something better than a mumble.

      Probably the biggest problem we have with the popular conception of Lil Wayne, is the idea that his lyrics hold gems of genius. His fans constantly state how deep and admirable his rhymes and metaphors are, but looking at some of his song titles alone should be enough to prove how preposterous this idea is. Since we are looking for lyrical genius, lets see which of his song lyrics are looked up the most(though we’re unsure if they are looked up because fans can’t understand him or if they are actually impressed by them, but we digress) The list of Lil Wayne’s “best”/ most popular rap songs off of Lyrics.com looks like this : Milli, Lollipop, Got Money, I'm Me, P_ssy M.V.P., I Feel Like Dying, Something You Forgot, and I'm A Beast. Titles are supposed to give you the main idea of what a song is about, or allude to it. So, simply looking at these titles, what is the impression we get? Out of these eight hit songs, only two titles have anything that could possibly contain a meaningful subject in them, I Feel Like Dying, and Something You Forgot. The other SIX, are either about how rich he is(Milli, Got Money), his supposed sexual prowess(P_ssy MVP, Lollipop), and how awesome he is(I’m A Beast, I’m Me). So basically, Lil Wayne’s fame was mostly built upon nothing other than him rapping about how awesome he is; deep, no? These ideas are largely simplistic and self absorbed, yet Lil Wayne has managed to write large majority of his songs based on them. Why people think that is genius, we are clueless. If we shouted how spectacular we were on the street, people would probably call us deranged or a narcissistic individuals, however Lil Wayne, with his hundreds of publicity stunts, has managed to become a rap trend. Ridiculous.

      If you are convinced that Lil Wayne’s lyrics are sub-par by the above paragraph, you can skip the next few. However, if you are unconvinced by simply analyzing the song titles, please, read on, and we will show you that actual lyrics are simply more of the same.

      So, the song titles are simplistic, self absorbed garbage, now lets look at the lyrics themselves, hit song “Milli” is an example. And, just so no one can say we’re drawing lyrics out of context, we’ll go through an entire section of the song.

      "...They say I'm rappin like BIG jay, and tupac, //Andre 3000 where is erika badu at ...
      My name ain't Bic but I keep dat flame man //Who that wanna do dat boy ya knew dat u dat Swallow // And I be da shit now u got loose bowels  
      I don't 'O U' like two vowels //But I would like for u to pay me by the hOUr  
      And I'd rather be pushing flowers //Then to be in the pen sharing showers  
      Tony told us this world was ours //And the Bible told us every girl was sour…
      Don't play in her garden ... her flower //Call me Mr. Carter or Mr. Lawn Mower  
      Boy I got so many bitches like I'm .. //Even Gwen Stefani see she couldn't doubt me"

      Now we’ll exhaustively examine these gems that Lil Wayne has spit for us. To start this verse, Lil Wayne says “I’m rapping like BIG, jay, and tupac”, and compares himself to Andre 3000 and Erika Badu. These are all huge, respected names, so basically he is saying he is awesome at rapping. Then he talks about not being a BIC(lighter) and keeping “dat flame”. A connection can sort of be seen, but its hard to see where he is going and what he is saying. When you get down to it, these lyrics mean nothing other than “I’m so baller,” yet, Lil Wayne decides to say it in a thousand small ways. Indeed, he goes on to say “I be da sh**, now you got loose bowels”. Ok! was that necessary? Metaphors are supposed to enhance people’s understanding of what you are saying, instead of being disgusting, fairly moronic, and confusing. After that lovely line, he talks about how he doesn’t “’O U’ like two vowels [Get it? O=owe U=you, hilarious no?]” Ummm, what? We have loose bowels (because he is so awesome?) and now he doesn’t owe us money? What is he even saying? He does go on though. Next he says “But I would like for you to pay me by the hOUr” Yeah... we don’t even know what he means by that. It sounds like he wants his fan base to keep buying his album… maybe? From this Lil Wayne jumps to how he would rather be dead than in jail ("And I'd rather be pushing flowers //Then to be in the pen sharing shower). We have no idea why he decided to start talking about this mid rap. It has no context nor reason for being here, basically its just a random metaphoric thought. After that insert, Lil Wayne really starts to make sense when he talks about how the “Bible told us every girl was sour…”(direct quote?) And he talks about not playing in her garden, which he might mow, since he is “Mr. Lawn Mower.” Maybe by every girl being sour, and not playing in her garden he is alluding to how Adam was in the Garden of Eden and ate the forbidden fruit… but that really makes no sense, because it wasn’t Eve’s garden, and there is no reference to a flower in the Adam and Eve tale. So we’ll chalk this up to another random statement, that conveniently rhymes. The next line is where we ended the quote because we didn’t want to include any hard curse words in this document. But anyhow, Lil Wayne returns to the original idea of how grand he is by saying “Boy, I got so many b******…// Even Gwen Stefani see she couldn’t doubt me.” Unfortunately, again, we are back to how supposedly great Lil Wayne is. Perhaps he thinks his fans will stop listening if he doesn’t remind them that the song is awesome, by literally saying it is awesome. Anyways, we think that stopping here with examining his actual lyrics is sufficient.

      But lets think about what we’ve read. Even this small song excerpt became extremely redundant and exhausting, and yet it, by far, does not display the worst of his lyrics. You can argue that this song just isn’t one where he shows his genius, but after looking at many of his other famous lyrics, we can guarantee that none of them drastically outshine these. Every Lil Wayne song follows the same basic structure found in the “Milli” excerpt. They have an extremely simplistic idea, reiterated many times with copious amounts of complicated and unhelpful metaphors, plus some random comments that rhyme well. That’s it.

      Now that we have established that Lil Wayne’s lyrics are rubbish and his flow horrible, let us examine whether we can even take anything he says seriously or at face value.  While Lil Wayne has made many songs, all of them seem to follow the same equation, for the most part he raps about the gangster lifestyle he lives and how many girls he gets.  What if we were to tell you that none of this is true; would his legion of fans still worship him? Would we still be jealous of this illustrious rapper? Would you judge him the same way you have judged rappers in the past?

      Can Lil Wayne be taken seriously when he says he’s a “player” and gets so many girls?  Well we suppose he can, just as we’re sure any rich and famous young man would have no problem in securing himself a female, or multiple ones.  So what distinguishes Lil Wayne, or any other rapper for that matter, from any other rich and famous individual? The answer is nothing.  Now this is assuming that even with his money and fame that he is attracted to girls.  For all of you who don’t know, Lil Wayne has been seen in public french kissing Baby aka Birdman in the mouth.  His defense was, “yeah I kissed him he’s my daddy, you don’t kiss ur daddy nigga?”  No, Lil Wayne the typical male behavior isn’t to kiss one’s father in the mouth, in fact, the slipping of the tongue is normally reserved for members of the opposite sex.  Once again, we have to call for an open and un-biased judgment, if anyone other than Lil Wayne had done this would this be viewed as normal behavior? We think not.  Being a two straight heterosexual males, we would view this as gay in itself, but since we call for un-biased responses from our readers we also will leave this matter up in the air.  Keep in mind however, that upon going to Google images and typing Lil Wayne, no images with females come up, but do you know what does? Lil Wayne always alone, or with Baby, the very man who he slipped the tongue with.  Also keep in mind that unless Lil Wayne is making a guest appearance upon someone else’s track, he cannot make a video without Baby being in it.  That in itself says nothing, but combined with the fact that we have never heard of this supposed pimp ever being in a relationship with a female, and with the fact that he has kissed a man in the mouth, we can logically assume he may swing to the left.  Now don’t say the picture is fake, because it has already been authorized as real by Lil Wayne himself in an interview.  Also, we can say that Lil Wayne has most likely not dated unbeknownst to us,   as it is very difficult to keep star relationships private in Hollywood.  Now to be fair, we have heard rumors that Lil Wayne has dated Trina, but once again, there are no images of them being together, and even if they did exist Trina used to date Baby (aka the man Lil Wayne kissed in the mouth).  Last but not least, even if you buy his dumb father excuse, Baby is not his father, he just calls him that.  We would also like to say that in no way is this bashing homosexuals, just refuting Lil Wayne’s statements.  Also it should be noted that his being gay doesn’t go along with the gangster image he tries to portray and is a taboo in rap in general.   

      Now let us examine whether Lil Wayne, or any other rappers’ thuggish, ruggish images can be taken seriously.  Lil Wayne claims to be a thug, affiliated with the crypts, bloods, etc, which is irrelevant. What is important is that he claims gangster ties.  There is one problem however, the question of when Lil Wayne would have involved himself in gang activity?  At the young age of 15, he was basically adopted by rap superstar Baby.  Now, be honest, what would a sane individual prefer to do?  Make a couple tracks in a nicely air conditioned studio with a couple of famous rappers, thereby gaining stardom and all the perks associated with it, or a career in managing a drug empire, constantly on the run from cops, constantly worrying about your life and the fear of betrayal, oh and knowing everything you worked so hard for could suddenly be brought to an end?  Now what would be the benefit of joining a gang when all the things the world has to offer are suddenly opened up to you?  Even if an individual did choose the latter that person would probably not be deemed very intelligent, and so certainly not an object of admiration.  We can then say that logically, Lil Wayne likely has no more gangster association than the kids he’s marketing to that try and emulate the same lifestyle.  In fact, let us let all of you  in on a big secret, anyone who has ever gangbanged in the music industry has long since STOPPED.  We can therefore say that on the unlikely ASSUMPTION that Lil Wayne has gangbanged, he does not do that anymore because the cons out weigh the pros for someone in his situation.

      Now that we have reached the end of our argument, let us examine the FACTS together.  If one were to judge with an open and unbiased mind, they would find that Lil Wayne’s lyrics and rapping don’t speak for themselves; therefore, he relies on the fame of close associates to gain media renown, the primary cause for his success today.  While we don’t view Lil Wayne as a good rapper, we do admit that he is a good businessman, effectively using samples from hit songs, cameo appearances, and tons of self-hype to catapult himself to the top of the charts.  However, this hype is built upon a false premise, which is the foundation for his fame.  Upon closer investigation one can find that Lil Wayne is not everything he claims to be, from his supposed gangster image and affiliations, to his being a supposed “player”- it is still up in the air as to which way he swings, mind you.  This is the equivalent of the discovery that a presidential candidate isn’t the embodiment of everything he campaigns for, John Edwards, for example has recently come under fire for having an affair. Should Lil Wayne not be judged with the same scrutiny when we discover that he in no way manifests the qualities he is trying to put on display; furthermore, can you honestly say we are jealous when there is nothing to be jealous of?  Our purpose in writing this is not to “hate” but to free your mind, not just in this case but in many others, whether it be what music you listen to, what food you eat, or what political views you choose to associate yourself with. We urge you to judge things carefully, and not simply go with what the mainstream tells you.  John Mayer once said, “when they own the information they can bend it all they want”, it seems that a truer statement was never spoken.  Flobots say that “there is a war going on for your mind,” well it seems we’re losing.  To win this war we must honestly and openly ask ourselves why we choose to have the opinions we have, and make sure when we’re buying a product, or accepting an idea we’re buying, or accepting it for the actual product or idea, and not a false premise associated with it. Of course we cannot tell you what to like or dislike, but based on fairly universal criteria, we can ask you to really evaluate what you decide is good or bad, and that includes the skill and talent of Lil Wayne as a rapper. Again, this isn't a personal attack on him as a human being, instead we simply wrote this to display our logics and reasons behind our opinion of Lil Wayne. Now upon reading this, decide for yourself if Lil Wayne is still the messiah to rap. The choice is up to you.   

Here is a short list of rappers who we deem to be worthy of listening to, Lil Wayne isn’t on it :)

      Tupac, Biggie, The Roots, Jurassic 5, Lupe Fiasco, Eminem, Bone Thugs n Harmony, Krayzie Bone, Common, Papoose, Immortal Technique, Sage Francis, Outkast, Swollen Members, Kayne West, Blue Scholars, Wierd Al, Talib Kweli, Mos Def, Common Market, Dilated Peoples, Black Violin, Q-Tip, Black Eyed Peas, and Flobots  

This message has been brought to you by Kamran Everest Hakiman and Manuel Black Peralta; furthermore, it was edited and proof read by Elizabeth Cornwell.  I would also like to give a shout out to Pouya who inspired me to join forces with Kamran to write this.  If it wasn’t for you dissing flobots I would have never came out to discredit Lil Wayne/Birdman Junior/The Carter/and many other aliases.