Hip Hop Track of The Week

Tha Carter III is 'Lil Wayne's insane new album. On top of being one of the best rappers out there, he might be the only rapper to have a 'Lil in his name and actually not suck. The album is simultaneously self-assured and paranoid. He delves in some really bizarre role play, which actually reminds me of Faith No More's The Real Thing Album.

Strangeness hits its zenith in "Phone Home", with a chorus that somberly chants: "we are not the same... I am a martian". If you google 'Lil Wayne, and see that he has more tattoos on his face than the average federally incarcerated inmate has on his entire body, you might be inclined to agree. Sonically, the music creates a synesthesia that lands you somewhere between the lights of a hovering spacecraft, and a time elapsed film of rotting fruit - and I mean that in a good way.

Here are some of the weirder lyrics:

...i can get your brains for a bargain
like i bought it, from target; hiphop is my supermarket...

...We are not the same i am an alien
like gonzalez young college student who done just flipped the game like houston
Im used to promethazine in 2 cups...

...They don't make em like me no more; matter fact they never made em like me before
im rare, like mr clean with hair - no brake lights on my car rare.
I never had lice and I never had fear; I rap like I done died and gone to heaven I swear -
And year I'm a bear like black and white hair, so Im polar...


It's almost nonsense, but not quite. He's kind of like if Ghostface and George Clinton had a love-child, and that child was delivered through a vocoder, raised by Old Dirty Bastard and Prince, and they got him hooked on Sizzurp - you'd get Lil' Wayne.