By Ryan Broderick, Editor-at-Large
Lil' Wayne's newest mixtape, "No Ceilings" was officially released on October 31st. Now that he's pleaded guilty to gun charges, looking at a one-year jail sentence, this might be the last thing we hear from him for a while.
"No Ceilings" has some rough edges, but for the most part it's pretty enjoyable. It opens strong with "Swag Surfin" sampling "Swag Surfin" by F.L.Y. With it's endless loop of horns and thumping bass, it seems to say "Wayne's here to show you what he thinks". Which is essentially what "No Ceilings" is, a showcase of Lil' Wayne's take on the last six months of music.
The mixtape gets a bit repetitive in the middle; falling into lulls between the pop single remixes, like "Poke Her Face (sampling ‘Make Her Say' by Kid Cudi)", "Run This Down (sampling ‘Run This Town' by Jay Z)" or "I Got No Ceilings (sampling ‘I Got A Feeling' by Black Eyed Peas)". Lil' Wayne's vocal persona definitely carries it along though, hiding something interesting under even the weakest beat.
Lil' Wayne stirs a lot of debate in the hip-hop community over his lyrical content. Often times he'll trade off between sounding like a robotriping (abusing cough medicine) demon or some kind of ketamine (horse tranquilizer) alien. At the same time though, he's shown he has a great ability for wordplay, irony, complex vocal patterns, and lyrical depth.
So which Lil' Wayne is on "No Ceilings"? Well, he's certainly less drugged out than recent releases, and he's not auto-tuned very much at all, and he's got some really clever stuff, but it really isn't anything more than a warm up, lyrically.
He slides into a weird metal chug on "I Think I Love Her" but it's interesting no matter how uncomfortably close it sounds to Limp Bizkit. Musically, though everything else he switches off comfortably between high-melody R&B loops and bare bones hip-hop samples.
"No Ceilings" is a delightfully lazy warm up album that hints at something better just on the horizon. And as far as mixtapes go, that's definitely the aim. Listening to "No Ceilings" it's clear why Lil' Wayne has built a career off filling mid-album gaps with mixtapes.
Just think, Lil' Wayne released a collection of songs taken from other songs he riffed over in his tour bus and ended up with something pretty enjoyable. And when he releases it as a mixtape, he transparent about it and let's you know it's all in good fun.
Maybe the great debate about Lil' Wayne is how horribly easy he makes it seem, or maybe we've all just gotten lazy. Either way, as Lil' Wayne says at the end of "No Ceilings", "I just like to have fun… They ask me why do you do this? Give out free music… Because I have plenty of it."
Lil’ Wayne released recent production just before he faces jail time. (Photo Courtesy of fiftyonefiftyone.com)