Lil Wayne Is Rabid, Raw on Dedication 4
The rapper's latest mixtape contains moments both great and questionable
Dedication 4
Year: 2012
Artist: Lil Wayne
Label: Big Kanaka - SoSouth
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Always and forever, 2007sDa Drought 3isLil Waynes best mixtape. The reasons for this are innumerable, but many of them have something to do with focus. Though 100 minutes and 29 songs in length, the tape has maybe an ounce of filler, making room for little except the biggest beats of its era (Crazy, Throw Some Ds, Show Me What You Got) for Wayne to just ravage through. Which, of course, the then-24-year-old took full advantage of: Through innumerable batshit similes, sports references and disgustingly awesome cunnilingus-centric punchlines, the NOLA native made his claim of being The Best Rapper Alive sound almost valid.
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Listening toDrought 3back-to-back with the n! ewDe dication 4, flaws with the latter become pretty apparent. For starters, the songs here dont feel as fully germinated as they should; Waynes never shown any supreme sense of song structure, but theres no question that practically anyDroughtsong sounds miles more organized than, say, the version of No Lie found here. And, despite the delightfully anachronistic insertions of SpottieOttieDopaliscious and G. Deps Special Delivery, the beat-sampling of4 also featuringFutures Same Damn Time,Rick Rosss So Sophisticated, G.O.O.D. Musics I Dont Like remix, among other zeitgeisty Southern-rooted bangers isnt varied enough to stay interesting throughout.
Even so, this tape is full of some of the Wayne-iest zaniness ever committed to DatPiff, and unless youre easily offended or insistent on the idea that rap needs to beaboutsomethingto be worth listening to,4can be a pretty great time. From Same Damn Tune: Her clit look like a jellybean / Im on that promethazine / Blow your ass to smithereens / Kush strong like Mr. Clean. From Burn: Money talks, bitch, and mine talks Robin Leech / That lean got me slow as Lisa Turtle / Ask Screech. From Amen: My ver-dick hung like a jury. The most common criticism of Wayne right now which is to say, postTha Carter IVandSorry 4the Wait is that hes losing interest in rapping altogether, but theres enough lyrical rabidness here to stave off such an idea, if only slightly. TheDedicationseries, after all, is named as such because its installments are supposed to show how firmly committed (er,dedicated) Tunechi is to his craft.
As with any other Wayne project, there are questionable moments here. On closer A Dedication, Wayne talks about how he built a skatepark to get them kids off the streets, but just a few tracks earlier he allows13-year-oldChicago rapper Lil Mouse to glorify a .30 clip of them hollow tips. Not a good look. Then, on the J. Cole-featuring Green Ranger, Wayne says he [doesnt] even like this beat, which, why the hell would you put a beat that you dont like on your mixtape? And, of course, we get a few lines here and there that just dont even make sense even with a Weezy filter: My homie T roll up my blunt / Skinnier than Rex Ryan. Um, Weezy, even after thelap band surgery, dude still isnt that trim! Still, a Wayne mixtape can only be so bad, andDedication4isnt exactly an all-time nadir. For all its flaws, this tape still stands as evidence that Dwayne Carter isnt falling off as much as you might be hearing about.
Essential Tracks:Same Damn Tune, Burn
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