lil wayne samples whomever he wants
February 6th, 2008
I have this hazy memory of New Year’s Day 2008 and it’s about 3 in the morning and we stumble back to 1806 Lamont St, and Gillanders asks me if I’ve heard of Li’l Wayne. And I have, but just what I’ve been reading online about how he puts out a ton of material, and people like Sasha Frere Jones are geeking out over him. I haven’t actually heard any of his stuff.
Gillanders plays me some tracks, and some are just o.k., but some are mind-buggling.
[audio:lil_wayne-lalala.mp3]So basically Li’l Wayne is a kid rapper, and then gets mad skills, gets pumped, grows dreadlocks and starts dropping masses of tracks on the internet, do I have the story right? He has some quote somewhere about how "they’re always leaked anyway so I figure I’d do the leaking"…kind of like Radiohead with In Rainbows. He hasn’t released an official album in 2 years, but he’s flooded the net with tracks to download. And I guess if you’re just giving the tracks away for free (and aren’t Danger Mouse making some kind of Grey Album) no one minds who you sample?
[audio:lil_wayne-help.mp3]I’ve been downloading his stuff, and there’s so much! I need someone to go through it all and pick out the really great tracks for me, but I realize that the only person who can find the Li’l Wayne that I like is me. But there’s so much…Vulture tries to help, but I don’t know if I agree with them…even if they do contribute the best description of his voice, saying he sounds like he "just crawled out of a bong"…