Lil Wayne & DJ Drama
Dedication 2
It's a good thing for mp3 blogs and file sharing. After all, if you don't live nearby a major rap hub, you probably are only able to pick up CD-R "mixtapes" that reflect your local scene--which, if you live in Houston means you get a lot of great DJ Screw, and if you live in Baltimore, you probably hang out with Spank Rock, but if you live in Nashville you're probably a little sick of David Banner. If you live in Nome, Alaska, you just need to start uploading more: none of us know what's going down up there, and we're all beginning to wonder if there's any bands in Canada besides the Constellation collective and Malajube. Does Canada make mixtapes? Do they make ones without Swollen Members?
Lil Wayne's cheaply put together and non-marketed Dedication II didn't just come out the same year that he was involved in multiple major-label releases, it slaughtered them wholesale: if you listened to Lil Wayne at all this year, and you weren't listening to Dedication II, than you're some kind of freak who still uses the regular old non-satellite radio. (And yes, that makes you a freak. Buy an iPod shuffle, you cave-dweller. You people are what's wrong with America, you and your 2000 vote for Nader.)
Wayne doesn't have the best beats or production value to back him up here--and that isn't a slight to Drama or Gangster Grillz, it's just a statement of fact: the beats are cheaply made and repetitive, which is always going to be the nature of this type of hip-hop. It's a old school soap box for an old school MC, so if anything about Dedication is going to be more than just an updated diary entry, it's going to be because of Wayne's ability to entertain and impress. Thank the gods of Kobol, he's got that in spades. Whether it's "Sportscenter," the single funniest rap/skit track released this year, or "Georgia...Bush," the only protest song of 2006 to have any real meaning whatsoever, Lil Wayne remains one of the brightest artists of the last ten years. Imagining what he would have done with the strong production forces beyond some of the other albums this year is like imagining a fantasy football team that includes LT, Lee Perry and Chuck Yeager--and Lil Wayne seems to show absolutely no sign of either stopping or slowing down. Although it's unlikely that Wayne will team up with Steve Albini any time soon, it's clear that just about anything else may be in the cards.
-Tucker Stone, 2006
Go buy mixtapes, buy them on Canal and W. Broadway, buy them outside Virgin Megastores, buy them online, upload 'em, download 'em, do whatever else. There's way more good ones out there than any one website or magazine will ever be able to dissect, and the difference between the good, the great and the what-the-hell could be, quite literally, a couple of inches.
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