“The paper gon’ come,
If not I’m gon’ get it,
I gotta die with money,
cause I wasn’t born with it,
It was 9/27, 82 baby do,
Char-it-y hospital,
A.K.A. the city zoo”
-- Leather So Soft
Happy Birthday Lil Wayne: 28 Years-Old, Incarcerated, And Sort On Top Of The World
Happy Birthday goes out to Lil Wayne, who’s 28 years old today. Last year, his birthday saw him receive a $200,000 chain and a $1,000,000 watch. Two years ago, it was $1,000,000 in a briefcase and a star-studded party in Miami. This year, he’s incarcerated at Rikers’ Island, so it’s hard to imagine him pulling in anything too lavish.
But that doesn’t mean he’s struggling, exactly. Have YOU ever released an album from prison?
Wayne’s I Am Not A Human Being hit the internet today, and already tops iTunes list of most downloaded albums. You can download it legally it on iTunes or on Amazon. Or you can scour the web for pirated links, of which I’m sure there are many. Not that Wayne really cares.
And that's why he's awesome. He doesn't pretend to care about anything besides music.
Without getting too romantic about it, Wayne might be the closest thing the current generation has to a true rock star. Material success matters, but only insofar as it validates his artistic expression. Which is why he’s fine with fans downloading his music for free, so long as it means he’s universally looked upon as the preeminent rapper of his time. Which... Well, even now, in prison, he’s pretty much the preeminent hip-hop artist of his time.
It’s not worth doing a half-assed account of Lil Wayne’s genius today, mostly because I’d probably get fired for trying to do that on company time. But in honor of his birthday, here are some excerpts from my favorite Lil Wayne profiles over the past few years.
First, from GQ:
He is rich, but the money hasn’t been marshaled to construct the kind of deep, flawless narrative of an entirely comfortable world where nothing is out of place, as many people use money to do. The world he’s created with his money is inside this bus, where he spends more time than anywhere else. He has bunks for his friends, a little recording studio, a steady supply of weed and pills and syrup, and isolation from the rest of the world. Since he was 11 years old, this is where he’s lived, and he’s hardly ever known anything else. He hasn’t driven a car in four years.
The bus is his world, a little independent territory that lives by his rules. What would the rest of the world look like if it were run according to his rules?
“First of all, I already know, men would be able to marry however many women they want. School would not be optional. It would be mandatory. Because I do not like unintelligent people—it’s a pet peeve. If you dumb, you not around me. Other than that, did I mention the men would be able to marry women? Ain’t no limit on that.”
... Then he turned up the TV. ESPN was doing a piece on Plaxico Burress’s suspension, which he felt especially offended by.
A little irony, there, since Lil Wayne is currently incarcerated in the same prison as Plaxico, for very similar charges of gun possession. More on Wayne, this time from the New Yorker:
He has been recording songs constantly—sometimes three or four a night. Many are astonishingly good, and most eventually find their way onto the Internet, where they can be downloaded for free, apparently with his blessing.
... In four years, Lil Wayne has evolved from a fairly predictable Southern gangsta rapper into an artist who may actually deserve the bragging rights to "best rapper alive," his current motto. His raspy, pixillated croak is as distinctive as Bob Dylan’s piercing Klaxon whine, and his music conveys the same sense of headlong propulsion that Dylan’s did in 1965. ... Lil Wayne’s verse on DJ Khaled’s "We Takin’ Over," which was released in March, is thirty seconds of uncontrolled id: he sounds demented enough to make the gothic boast "I am the beast—feed me rappers or feed me beats" seem like empirical description.
And finally, from Rolling Stone:
"This rock sh** just comes from what my life is now. I’ve grown into this person. I woke up one morning and had three or four women in my bed where I not only didn’t know their last names, I didn’t know the beginning letter of their first names. All I know is they're the most beautiful women in the world, and I was in my own place, in whatever city I was in. And I could have thrown a dart at the map, and I’d probably have a place there, too."
"I knew my driver was waiting downstairs for me. When my nose finally cleared from all the weed I had smoked, I smelled food in the kitchen and knew it was my chef. Then I look on my phone and see a message and know it’s from a popular woman everyone knows. And when I went into the studio that night, I couldn’t just rap."
"Yeah… Now, this is who I am."
If you're a Lil Wayne believer, of course, then all this is redundant. If not, then you probably think this is all ridiculous. Either way, though, he's set to be sprung from Rikers in 37 days, and at 28 years old, he's just about the only person on earth capable of dropping an album full of re-tread material, while incarcerated, and still topping the charts.
Just like that, the takeover continues... HAPPY BIRTHDAY LIL WAYNE.
(Photo via Derrick G’s impressive gallery)
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