Pages tagged “lil wayne”

Photos taken at Voodoo Music Festival by Rob Inderrieden

With Lil Wayne's summer blockbuster of an album, the South cemented its status as hip-hop's home court. So in a lot of ways it's no shock that BET's hip-hop awards (hosted at Atlanta's Civic Center) was dominated by rappers of a certain sub-Mason-Dixon flavor. Wayne, as the man of the hour, held court for the evening with three accolades.

By now you've probably heard about Kanye West's bizarro listening party this week for his upcoming LP 808s & Heartbreaks . More than 700 guests showed up for the L.A. exhibition curated by artist Vanessa Beecroft, not to mention the 40 nude women in faux-lambswool masks that lined the walls.

They say it's not what you know, but who you know. It seems Fall Out Boy has taken this rule to heart on its upcoming record, Folie à Deux. In an e-mail exchange with MTV News, fab FOB frontman Pete Wentz confirmed that the band has scored guest spots from Lil Wayne and Blondie frontwoman Debbie Harry for its upcoming record, set for release in November. Wentz also confirmed that workhorse producer Pharrell contributes a track to the album. We'd like to say this is Debbie Harry's strangest collaboration, but if you'll recall, she did that track with Mobb Deep and Coolio in 1999.

He's got game like Stuart. Scott. Fresh out the ESPN shop. You might not know that Lil Wanye recently became a blogger for the Entertainment and Sports Programming Network, but with the best-selling album of the year in his back pocket, Weezy has plenty of time to to devote to swag-offs and writing thesis-length analyses of pro football (dude has ESPN tattooed on his arm, for cryin' out loud).

VH1 just announced the “100 Greatest Hip-Hop Songs Ever!!!” and the list isn’t terrible. It’s actually pretty good. They have Public Enemy's “Fight The Power” in the right place (# 1), they identified the best Notorious B.I.G. song (“Juicy”) and, apart from the egregious inclusion of Coolio (at #38 with the horrendous “Gangsta’s Paradise”), they don’t have a lot of embarrassing inclusions.

But they did forget some amazing tracks.

Here, in 10 words or less, we make the case for the 10 best hip-hop songs VH1 forgot. They may not trump “Fight They Power,” but they’re all better than anything Coolio could ever dream of.

How do you top a Saturday Night Live season premiere already slated to pair Michael Phelps as host and Lil Wayne as musical guest (UPDATE: And Barack Obama)?

Dr. Dre has not had an album this millennium.

Since Dre's Chronic follow-up 2001 (which, against the rules of logic, actually came out in 1999), the world's population has risen by approximately 80 million people, and assumedly at least half of these people have released a mixtape with a Lil Wayne feature by now.

So, who's more gangsta: the Rolling Stones or Lil Wayne? Before you answer, consider the cinematic drug busts, the pacesetting debauchery, and the career-negating legal pimp slaps that the Stones and their handlers have laid down over the years. As Mick Jagger once sang, "Don't play with me, 'cos you're playing with fire."

"I ain't doing nothin’ but movin’ on, let the truth be known
But they talk that freedom matters, and didn't even leave a ladder, damn."
-Lil Wayne, “Tie My Hands”

And folks say he only raps about weed and candy-coated entendre...

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When Muddy Waters referenced a "gypsy woman" in the song of the same name, he was giving a shout out to traditions of Louisiana's long-standing voodoo culture. New Orleans continues to celebrate those traditions with its 10th annual Voodoo Music Experience. And while the name may sound rather ominous to those not in the know, the experience is more of the musical variety than the hexing one.

Things are looking up for Dwayne Carter. He's one of the hottest acts in the rap game right now, and the recently-released Tha Carter III is projected to be one of the biggest-selling albums of the year. And for good reason: with singles like "A Milli" and "Mr. Carter," Wayne has proven he's earned his position in hip-hop's pantheon. The album has its curiosities though, like final track "Don'tGetIt", an epic 10-minute diss where Wayne stops rapping about 3 minutes in and waxes philosophic on race relations, drug sentencing, the dismal state of education in America and political figureheads like Al Sharpton.

“I don’t rap, I sell movies,” spits Lil Wayne on “Playing with Fire,” a track from his seventh full-length album Tha Carter III. But if Lil Wayne was a movie, he’d be Richard Pryor’s Live at the Sunset Strip. Unlike Jay-Z’s recent American Gangster, he doesn’t portray a character whose adventures add up to a plot full of triumph and tragedy. Instead, Weezy freestyles about life like a smoked-out dude on the corner, and all sorts of crazy opinions tumble out of his mouth. He ridicules the Rev. Al Sharpton on “Dontgetit,” and says, “You’re just another Don King with a perm.” He claims to be a Martian on “Phone Home,” and on “Tie My Hands” he riffs on Hurricane Katrina, “I lost everything, but I ain’t the only one / First came the hurricane, then the morning sun.”

In the midst of a number one Billboard single, a revenge-based Internet leak of his insanely hyped new album and nights up answering your love queries for VH1's "Ask Weezy" feature, Lil Wayne kicks off his newest batch of summer tour dates tomorrow in Connecticut.