Between the lazy and cliche lyrics, the skateboarding obsession, the cough syrup addiction and the ever-declining quality of his albums, it can be easy to forget that Lil Wayne was once on top of the rap game. For those who weren't listening to Weezy from 2004 to 2008, it might be hard to imagine - but Lil Wayne really was the best rapper alive for those years, as he announced on "Tha Carter II" (2005).
The same things that have prevented Weezy from achieving long-lasting greatness - a lack of direction, an emphasis on quantity over quality, a flippant approach to music - were the very things that made him special in the beginning. And for a few years in the mid-aughts, he captured lightning in a bottle, synthesizing his organic creativity and nontraditional style into vast success. He challenged the norms of the game, relying on style and word play over story telling or insight.
While "Tha Carter III" (2008) is Wayne's most successful and most recognizable work, "Da Drought 3" (2007) was really Weezy at his best. A mixtape in the original sense of the word, the two-disc project has Wayne rapping over instrumentals from many of the day's hottest songs. The lack of focus that has plagued his recent works was exactly what made "Da Drought 3" so good. As he proclaims on "The Sky is the Limit," "I'm probably in the sky, flying with the fishes / Or maybe in the ocean, swimming with the pigeons / See my world is different like Dwayne Wayne." There's nothing substantive to that line, but it's clever, catchy and features a subtle reference to the old sitcom "A Different World" (1987-1993).
Wayne was style over substance; it didn't matter what he rapped about, just how he rapped it. No one had ever taken that formula to the same extreme as Weezy did, which is what made him so uniquely gifted. And if you need further proof that Weezy was untouchable at this time, look no further than the song "President." Wayne holds his own on Jay-Z's timeless "Dead Presidents" instrumental, asserting that "No, I never choke, but I strangle beats." He used the hype from "Da Drought 3" to build up the release of "Tha Carter III," helping it sell over one million copies in its first week.
This pattern of attaining hype and visibility through constant and often free releases was a Weezy trademark. While Jay-Z may have initiated the trend of yearly album releases, Lil Wayne took this practice a step further. While he released three studio albums from 2005 to 2008, he dropped six free mixtapes in that same period, including "Da Drought 3" and the first installments of his acclaimed "Dedication" (2005-2013) series. He was the first rapper to take advantage of the Internet age, using frequent releases to promote for-purchase albums. On top of this, he hopped on guest feature after guest feature: He was featured in 14 tracks in 2007 and 22 tracks in 2009. This hyperactivity elevated Wayne to the forefront of the rap world. It was impossible in the late 2000s to listen to the radio without hearing Weezy in one fashion or another. His model became the standard for hip-hop promotion - a model fully exemplified today by Rick Ross's Maybach Music Group. Constant visibility leads to increased album sales, and Lil Wayne was the first to realize this.
Lil Wayne's career may be in its final throes, but there was a time when his claims of being "the best rapper alive" were substantiated by his body of work. He outsold just about everyone, was omnipresent with his constant mixtape releases and guest features and revolutionized hip-hop promotion. So, the next time someone claims that Lil Wayne is garbage, just remember: He wasn't always.
Ryan Buell is a sophomore who has not yet declared a major. He can be reached at Ryan.Buell@tufts.edu.
