Review: Funeral - Lil Wayne
By Eleni Haberis
Bitch, I love Lil Wayne. I always have. I remember in 2008, when I first discovered it was cool to look at eating pussy as a sport, that rap IS punk, and that AutoTune is here to stay. Lil Wayne holds an important place as a primary influencer of today's rap game, but thank God he doesn't rely on nostalgia to be great (sorry, Jonas Brothers). Like the wise Tity Boi (aka 2 Chainz) once said, “If it wasn’t for Wayne, it wouldn’t be.”
That being said, Lil Wayne’s glory days are behind him, and he doesn’t have much to prove with the release of his newest album Funeral. It had very little promo - an Instagram post with the cover art about a week before, and that's it. But, as it turns out, it was better this way for two reasons:
- We did not need to overly excite ourselves. If you were to have the same level of hype you did for the release of Tha Carter V, and he served you this? I think you would be…like, really sad. Said lack of promo made listening to this more exciting, and allowed you to enjoy the album for what it is: one that starts strong, but has trouble keeping up.
- Lil Wayne is no longer cutting edge. Nothing too fresh or relevant is being said on this album, but it's got the same Weezy energy and cleverly nasty flow. He seems to (finally) be making music that he enjoys, no longer concerned with his audience saying “NO!” when he says “Eat this up!”
Funeral is packed to the brim with 24 songs, but there’s nothing that holds them all together. You can tell Wayne is having fun making them, and making whatever he likes, but you don’t get a sense of where he’s coming from or where he’s going. It’s like Huckleberry Finn without the Mississippi River - fun stories, some trying too hard, some that should've been left out, mostly entertaining, but what's the point?
The best songs on the album are classic, run-on sentence Lil Wayne, but this time he is rapping over more mature and refined beats. This is most evident in the first few songs, which are the main stars of the album. On “Mahogany,” Wayne is spitting over the smooooothest sample of a woman almost moaning - something up both of our alleys. After this, we go hard into “Mama Mia,” which starts like a goddamn Excision song. The EDM meets trap banger proudly boasts the wildly inappropriate pussy connoisseur we know and love: “Hopin' I don't smell like all these fuckin' vaginas I'm douchin'.”
When Funeral was first discussed, Lil Wayne stated “I love the difficulty of trying to fit in with what’s going on today - making sure I sound likeable to the ears today and having to remind myself that it’s not about what it was back then." So... is this why he threw Adam Levine on “Trust Nobody?” It’s hard to understand the obsession with tossing the dirty Maroon 69 frontman on a hook and thinking it’s going to be modern or popular. The closest Lil Wayne gets to current on this album is the 24 seconds of silence for Kobe heard at the end of “Bing James (ft. Jay Rock)”- the 8th song on the album.
Moving through Funeral is fun - more so than Wayne’s recent output - but this album is simply too long. This was probably exciting in the studio, but really: what situation can you put this album on and enjoy it front to back? No idea. A few songs will be put on playlists, and there are some good laughs to be had (not at Wayne’s expense, but with him), but this is ultimately nothing special for Wayne. Still, for the first time in a while, Wayne treating an album casually works to his benefit. Funeral provides you with enough purpose and the space needed to just enjoy what you like, and forget what you don’t.
BOPS: "Mahogany," "I Do It," "Dreams"
DUDS: "Trust Nobody," "Get Out Of My Head"
