Lil' Wayne - The Carter II

i am excited.

the disses on suffix seem usually vague? are those 2 back at it?

bg's triggamann's on big mike/evil empire be south part 7, i can yousendit

(Hook)
Im da trigga man
Trigga tra tra trigaa man
I do it myself I aint gotta send da man
Lil wayne keep talking, umma split yo wig
I’m a grown man, lil boy you a kid

B dot .Gizzle ni99a ya know you know me
I was part of a clic, now everybody know dey phony
Juvy my Ni99a, turk my dawg,
I’m the only one know what you seeing behing dem walls
Fresh with dem beats he one of da best
He left you woulda thought Wayne a be next
But He stayed, and that’s where he really should a been
Cuz Real niggz keep it real and young niggas do hoe shit
Weezy what even made you speak on me
I jump in ya squad beef, and that wadn’t on me
Cuz they all left and had you all lonely
You aint a street ni99a, everybody know you phony
You ca spit, you a beast I aint lying you could go
But when you step out the booth, ni99a you still a ho
I know,, you forget I gave you the game
But the trigga came to put it in your face ...

Shooter is amazing, it builds in a very un-hip-hop way. Almost sounds like it comes from a different record.

i liked edan, dooley-o, roots manuva, geto boys, the az album.. i cant think what else right now. liked the redman mixtapes, the clipse one was good but needed better beats i thought, bun b was great, but even there, i thought he was playing it safe.

all in all, yeah there were some good albums this year, but nothing that really made me go 'wow'

and its def not this lil wayne album - he sounds so lazy, hes not even trying, no wonder jay-z is his favourite rapper

lyrically this year, i think i have to say i liked kanyes album best - hes the only mainstream rapper out there who isnt a cardboard cartoon

I don't know how people are gonna say the Paul Wall album has at best 4-5 good songs; I can understand not finding it exceptional but its just totally consistent.

Three-6 is great, not as good as Unbreakables but good enough. I thought Bun-B was totally disappointing though.

Last Friday, the rapper Lil Wayne made his way to the Midtown studios of MTV. With teeth, wrists and neck aglitter with jewelry, he hyped his new album, out today, then told viewers to stay tuned for an episode of "Cribs," featuring tours of some celebrity houses, including his.

He paused. "I don't even have that crib no more," he said, nonchalantly. "Due to the hurricane."

Never mind. The house, in Lil Wayne's hometown, New Orleans, lives on in reruns, thanks to the MTV archives.

Even before Hurricane Katrina, this was a busy year for Lil Wayne. He appeared on hit records by Destiny's Child and Bobby Valentino. He was named president of Cash Money Records, the hugely influential New Orleans label that signed him more than a decade ago. He split with his longtime producer Mannie Fresh, who composed almost all of the music on Lil Wayne's first four solo albums. He enrolled part-time at the University of Houston, where he is studying for a degree in psychology. And in September, he celebrated his 23rd birthday.

Lil Wayne, born D'Wayne Carter Jr., was a professional rapper before he was a teenager. He says he wrote his first rhyme at 8. When he was 10, he caught the ear of the Williams brothers, Bryan (known as Baby or Birdman) and Ronald (known as Slim), who own Cash Money. The brothers eventually set Lil Wayne up with three other New Orleans rappers - Young Turk, B.G. and Juvenile - and called the group the Hot Boy$. By 1999, when Lil Wayne released his solo debut, "Tha Block Is Hot," he had already rapped on two of the era's most enduring hip-hop hits: Juvenile's evergreen club track "Back That Thing Up" and B.G.'s "Bling Bling," which changed the English language forever.

Today, Lil Wayne releases "Tha Carter II" (Cash Money/Universal), his fifth solo album. It's an impressive CD, and in some sense historic: it is poised to become the first top-selling New Orleans album since the hurricane. The first single, "Fireman," is already on the radio, and Lil Wayne recently shot a video for the next one, a gentle make-out song called "Grown Man."

It should probably come as no surprise that the New Orleans rap scene has largely been ignored by those talking and writing about New Orleans over the last few months. For all its mainstream success, hip-hop still isn't quite respectable.

And yet hip-hop is by far New Orleans's most popular musical export, and perhaps the most exciting. The city nurtures its own hip-hop subgenre, bounce music (imagine a drum-machine version of a marching-band version of a funk track), and has churned out a fistful of mainstream stars, including Master P, Mystikal and Juvenile, the former Hot Boy, who still makes hits. (His next album is due in February.)

In a dressing room after the MTV session, Lil Wayne said he had been too preoccupied recently to worry about whether New Orleans hip-hop was getting its due. He moved his mother out of the city to Miami, where he lives these days. (He studies online, and goes to Houston only for exams.) But his old New Orleans neighborhood, Hollygrove, was devastated, and he said he was dealing with it by trying not to think about it. "You really don't want to dwell on it because if you do, you'll bring yourself down," he said.

He took the same attitude when faced with his biggest musical loss: the defection of Mannie Fresh, who left Cash Money earlier this year to start his own label. (The other three Hot Boy$ have also left Cash Money, none happily.) The jovial Fresh and the precocious Lil Wayne made a great team. On "Block Burner," 1997, Fresh concocted a rubbery, futuristic beat and Lil Wayne, 14 at the time, rhymed over it in his eerie, sing-song croak. More recently, the two collaborated on "Go D.J.," a hit that revolved around a simple party chant that doubled as a rapper's tribute to his producer: "Go D.J./ 'Cause that's my D.J."

This time, Lil Wayne was forced to go it alone. Fortunately, he had already begun to change focus; "Tha Carter," released a year ago, was a showcase for increasingly intricate rhymes. This evolution is no accident. Lil Wayne knows that some people still see him as a former child star, even though he never made children's music. He says that despite his success (all of his albums have been certified gold or platinum), big-name rappers and producers have been slow to respond to his requests for cameo appearances. But he has generally declined to take offense. Snoop Dogg recently had a big hit with "Drop It Like It's Hot," based on a New Orleans catchphrase that Lil Wayne popularized. He responded on a mixtape track, turning an old Jay-Z boast into an unusual - perhaps unprecedented - show of hip-hop humility: "Nah I ain't a hater, don't get me wrong/ I made it a hot line, you made it a hot song."

Instead of Fresh-made beats, "Tha Carter II" is full of unexpected syllables and punch lines: "I will put dem body on chill like glac-i-ers/ Gracias, I'm craziest/ It's obvious, going against me is atheist." And near the end, he finds an unlikely replacement for his old producer: Robin Thicke, son of the Canadian actor and songwriter Alan, contributes a woozy, bluesy highlight called "Shooter."

Lil Wayne's voice, like his flow, keeps getting better, too. He can half-sing a melody like 50 Cent or emit a low, slow groan like Young Jeezy; perhaps he would like to remind us, and them, that he was doing it first, and doing it before he was old enough to drive.

One thing you won't hear on "Tha Carter II" is the one thing you might expect: a somber but hopeful song about the storm that destroyed the neighborhood he's still bragging about. When asked, he will talk about Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. He will talk about how the displacement has destroyed family traditions. "You ain't getting another good holiday," he said. "That ain't happening for some years." And he will talk about how displacement has also "brought the wrong people together," stranding bitter enemies in too-small towns. But he says he didn't want this CD to be dominated by the hurricane. "When I get behind that mike, I got a whole 'nother mind frame," he said, then added, "I rap about what they wanna hear." He saves the hurricane commentary for journalists, he said. He has found that it's a good idea to tell them what they want to hear, too.

It's sometimes strange to hear Lil Wayne still rhyming about choppers (guns) and dope boys and the mean streets of the old New Orleans. Then again, considering the year he's had, this may be the only sane response.

In any case, "Tha Carter II," more than any other new CD, is sure to be heard, and perhaps loved, by displaced New Orleans residents all over the country. No doubt many of them will hear something both admirable and familiar in Lil Wayne's determination to keep rapping, keep going, no matter what. "I holler Hollygrove on each and every song," he announces, on "Fly In," near the beginning of the new CD. How can he stop now?

###

What's Wayne studying?

The album is fantastic.

I really don't get why hip hop fans wouldn't love this album.

dear mr. toilet, i'm the shit.

He's in big trouble!

http://www.kpho.com/news/15120184/detail.html

"tha mobb" >> anything album track on tha carter III

>> any song besides "a milli" and "nuthin on me" maybs

the carter III is gonna age pretty badly. carter 2 should place higher on end of decade lists, but it won't

mo fire beat is awesome and. more reggae themed tracks 4 raps plz

since someone's revived a wayne thread, does anyone know what "can't no nigga" off of da drought 2 samples?

mo fire beat is awesome and. more reggae themed tracks 4 raps plz

― ianmaxwell, Thursday, June 11, 2009 7:35 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark

yes

my city hot, I'm dodgin the city cop
I play em' like pitty pat, I'm kickin back
I'm gettin stacks, these bitches is really rats
I fuck em and give em back, I really mack
how real is that, you love him, you really wack
I hustle and bend my back
My muscle is in tact
My biceps and triceps is AYYYE YESSS

^this pwns 98% of tha carter III

i guess focused wayne translates far better to complete albums whereas the sizzurp aids in brief brilliance

or cocktail of drugs, whatever

i wouldn't totally agree with that but you're def right to an extend - the only thing is that da drought 3 is in my top 20 of the decade and that was certainly in his sizzurp period, but over time the drugs have certainly deteriorated his brain and they made him a worse rapper and you can see that on tha carter III to the point where one of my few favorite songs ("tie my hands") was recorded 2 years before the album was released - there is a problem with the beats too and also the pressure to make an Album - "nuthin on me" and "let the beat build" are two of the better tracks and they are two of the most fun but they seem kind of insubstantial to the best moments on tha carter II and even da drought 3

extent*

"you're def right to an extenze"

yeah drought 3 is brilliant but it feels more like a collection of songs than a cohesive prolonged effort, like drought 3 is the product of 100 entirely separate visits to the studio whereas carter 2 (and 1) are concious daytime affairs.
i would 100% take carter 1 over 3

not sure about carter 2 vs 1 albums worth of mixtape wayne tho'

1 and 2 are focused, hard, dynamic. i gave 3 away...remember that bullshit La la track and the playing with fire embarrassment? nothing like that on these.

mixtapes are mostly a mess too...people got caught up who weren't really familiar with 1 & 2.

i like to clown carter III a lot because of how lauded it became even amongst ppl who had been playing close attention to wayne, but it still has a bunch of great tracks and a bunch of great pop songs - it just disappoints me because of what my expectations were

Comfortable is one of my favourite songs of all time

that song is amazing - one of the more enduring ones off the album

there's plenty of equal and better pop than carter 3 but it's hard to find anything similar to alien wayne

i have a strange love for shoot me down. seems like the kinda lazy slow barely even verses and awful plodding beat and shit singing is like a vindication for all his hard work. also it's hella climactic despite it's flaws

I remember when we were in school and we used to listen to Shine, it wasn't 'til I tried looking it up on youtube recently that I realised it was Wayne it had been so long since I heard it

shine is amazing - classic ringtone

this fucking album

All I have in this world is a pistol and a promise
A fist full of dollars, a list full of problems
I'll address them like P.O. boxes
Yeah I'm from New Orleans, the Creole cockpit
We so out of it, zero tolerance
Gangsta gumbo, I'll serve 'em a pot of it
I'm wealthy, still fucking with that block shit
Wet your ass up, head to feet til your sock drip
Don't slip, you might fall and bust your ass
No snakes at the Carter, tell the gardener cut the grass
I hear 'em but they talking under masks
Stop throwing pebbles at a bulletproof glass