Friday, February 29, 2008
SYRUP KILLS...WEEZY WANTS TO QUIT?
Lil Wayne's Styrofoam cup is practically the elephant in the room.
Journalists and fans alike have speculated about just what Weezy is downing every time we see him in public with one of those cups. They know full well that Wayne has thrown us plenty of hints through his verses. "I like my Sprite Easter-pink," he rapped on DJ Khaled's "We Takin' Over." More pointedly, he declared "weed and syrup till I die" on "Duffle Bag Boy," a collaboration with Atlanta's Playaz Circle.
On Sunday night, during a concert in Newark, New Jersey, Wayne explained to the audience that sipping syrup — a combination made up chiefly of promethazine and codeine, which is supposed to be prescribed by doctors for severe colds and pneumonia — is a part of the culture in the South (although Philadelphia is also notorious for syrup). He also talked about how he gets flak for it.
"I've been criticized for the things I chose and things I've chosen to do," he said at the show. "What I tell 'em?" The sample from "I Feel Like Dying" kicked in, and a shirtless Wayne shook his dreads as thousands of fans sang along. "If you do what the f--- you wanna do, say yeah!" he yelled.
Wayne has said he's been hearing about how he needs to cut back on syrup more than ever in the wake of Pimp C's death in December. The UGK member's death was ruled accidental and due to a deadly combination of syrup and his sleep-apnea condition. Pimp was the most prominent name in the hip-hop community to have a syrup-related death, although Houston MC Big Moe and the legendary DJ Screw have also had their untimely passings tied to syrup consumption. Pimp's partner Bun B recently went public and called the popularity of syrup — also known as "lean," "Texas tea" and "drank" — in the South an "epidemic" and said anyone who uses it may want to take a long look at themselves.
"No, he hasn't talked to me," said Wayne, sitting in his tour bus in his native New Orleans, about Bun, a longstanding friend of the Cash Money Millionaires family. "But I'm going through that same sh-- with my friends, with my mom. Everybody wants me to stop all this and all that. It ain't that easy."
Weezy said he can't just quit cold turkey.
"Do your history, do your research," he vented. "It ain't that easy — feels like death in your stomach when you stop doing that sh--. You gotta learn how to stop, you gotta go through detox. You gotta do all kinds of stuff. Like I said, I'm a selfish-ass n---a. I feel like everything I do is successful and productive. It's gonna be hard to tell me I'm slipping. It's hard to sit and tell a n---a 'Stop.' 'F---, how can we tell this n---a to stop when every f---ing thing he do is successful? This n---a is making progress. He just went and talked to kids and that sh-- was amazing.' Feel me? So what am I doing wrong?
"Let me do me. Everybody's got their thing," he continued with frustration. "Why focus on me? Don't compare me to no one. Don't compare me to no one who has passed, and why they passed. I can walk out this b---h right now and get hit by a bus. Don't judge me. You wanna judge me, put on a black gown and get a gavel. Get in line with the rest of them that's about to judge me. I got court dates every other month. It's me against the world — that's how I feel."
Wayne's disappointment, especially with the way he's been getting frowned upon by the people closest to him, has been festering for weeks. He says his folks — both his inner circle and his associates — have been telling him to chill ever since he got arrested in Yuma, Arizona, on weapons and drug charges — charges he has steadfastly denied. (He also said one of the few positive phone calls he got after the arrest was from Mary J. Blige.) As he sat on the bus and contemplated, he said that apart from music, he really has no sanctuary.
"I don't escape. I don't," he said coldly, looking out the window with a thousand-yard stare. "I'm too shelled-in by it. It's in my own circle. Everybody around here be looking down. I deal with it. ... I never been one to run. I stand there and take it and throw it right back at them b---hes. That's' always been my game."
Admittedly, the negative opinions about the controversy surrounding him has added fuel to his fire, both in and out of the studio. However, even the "Fireman" says he can explode after awhile.
"It's inspiring me, but I'mma tell them now they better stop," he warned. " 'Cause they [are trying to] push me off the edge. If I jump, I'm taking the world with me. That's my word."
NIKE AND NOTORIOUS B.I.G....
Nike has just released a series of Notorious B.I.G. tribute shirts that show the imagery of B.I.G.'s classic "Ready To Die" album cover with the Nike touch.
NEW JOE BUDDEN VIDEOS
New videos from Joey. "Talk To Em" video and an Interview:
http://meccaofhiphop.com/joebudden/
Saturday, February 23, 2008
A PREVIEW....THE CARTER 3
Yesterday, Blender traveled to Atlanta to visit Lil Wayne — it was our second Weezyscursion in three months, the first being for this recent feature — and the wildly prolific MC was nice enough to play us several tracks intended for his forever-delayed LP, Tha Carter III. We didn't hear final mixes — and it's anyone's guess if titles (much less entire songs) will stick — but what we did hear was enough to convince us that the album will (almost) be worth the long, long wait. (It's currently set for an April release.) The rundown below is lighter on lyrics than sonic description largely because the internal rhymes, dazzlingly extended metaphors and references to food stacked up faster than we could write them down — a good sign for Weezy diehards.
>> "Lollipop"
"I'm not a lollipop rapper," Wayne told us, by way of introducing this song as the radio single, "but this track is cold." It's one of many new Wayne songs to feature T-Pain/Roger Troutman vocoder singing effects and it transcends its boner-as-blow-pop conceit on the force of its strangeness: Wayne's singing isn't just a run through the T-Wayne ProTools patch, it's chopped up and layered over itself in a dense, alien collage. It actually de-naturalizes the vocoder gimmick, which is as common as high-hats nowadays. "Dudes are gonna hate this one," he said. "Ugly dudes, that is."
>> "Beat the Block"
Hollowed-out and bleepy. The percussion approximates African hand drums, which is why Wayne refers to the track as "Kunte Kinte" at one point; he rides the Alex Haley reference, rapping that he eats "Roots for dinner," before adding that he's "In the garden, feeding fruits to sinners." He also tells us about a girl who likes "the Weezy F — I bad-grade her."
>> "Eat You Alive" [ft. Ludacris]
The T-Wayne effect is back and pushed to an avant-garde extreme: multitracked, demonic, paired with pained female vocals that intone "he's gonna eat you aliiiiiive." Wayne likes food, and this is about comparing rappers to food and then going Audrey II on them. The math here is simple: Wayne makes any track he's on better + Ludacris makes any track he's on better = A Möbius strip continuum of WTF?!
>> "I'm Illi"
This "street single" produced by "Bossy" beatsmith Bangladesh should be released to radio next week. There is no hook — just non-stop rhymes over a thunderously spare backdrop: a screwed-down vocal sample repeating "I'm Illi," pounding 808 drums and claps.
>> "Let the Beat Build"
Drums by longtime Wayne producer/engineer Deezle, ethereal soul sample by Kanye West. Structured something like Coldplay's "The Scientist," which is to say we start with nothing but melody for about 8 bars, and then 808 drum sounds are introduced glacially: high hats for four bars, high hats and snares for the next four, and so on, so that the song revs up in an excitingly disjointed, slow motion way.
Source - http://www.blender.com/Exclusive-Previewing-Lil-Waynes-Tha-Carter-III/Blender-Blog/blogs/1168/18751.aspx
