So last year...

Mr. Carter (Instrumental) - Lil Wayne - 2008

Lil Wayne grows on you, kind of like a fungus, you can't decide whether it's one of those tasty high-priced Asian ones, or athlete's foot...

I'm grateful to him for inspiring the production on Tha Carter III, and I despise him for ruining most of the tracks by rapping on them. What more is there to say? If you missed it, the Blender profile from this past summer is seminal, nearly amazing:

Wayne once mentioned that he keeps a set of encyclopedias on his bus, so I ask about his reading habits. Does he ever pick a subject at random and learn all about it?

“No,” he says. “I’m a millionaire.”

“What’s that mean? Millionaires still have things they can learn!”

“Are you a millionaire?” he asks. “No. So don’t tell me what millionaires do.”

There's nothin like the dealer's feelin...

The Corner - Common f. The Last Poets, Kanye West - 2005
The Corner - Clipse and the Re-Up Gang - 2005

It doesn't matter what you say, the bullets and blunts will never leave the hip-hop scene. And while we are given a thousand reasons to hope lately (some of which I believe), something about the promise of hard times ahead draws me to these kinds of songs. I think it's the bass line - something we hear less and less in contemporary rap (all drums and synths). But the bass connects songs like these (at least in my mind) to a previous era of music concerned with the bullshit that comes from living in the city - songs like this make me miss Curtis Mayfield, in a curious way. But maybe we can get Common to change his wardrobe to fit the role...

And Clipse, of course, turns this track of social commentary into a heater about slanging, of course. You may never hear anyone else say this about Clipse, but their devotion to that genre is downright elegant.

Peep the video