AR: Da Drought 3

Lil Wayne - Da Drought 3 (2007)

Da Drought 3 is perhaps Lil Wayne's best received "album" of the Aughts, but it is one for which he will receive something close to $0.00 (directly, anyways). DD3 is not a proper album but a "mixtape," hip-hop's answer to the reggae dub tradition of taking popular beats / hooks / rhythm tracks / complete songs and reworking them into original art. Because mixtapes liberally sample popular songs from all sorts of different albums and labels - and not just sample them, but really "cover" them in a particularly hip-hop fashion - releasing them officially would be a legal nightmare, requiring permissions and royalty arrangements that in all likelihood would not be forthcoming. Artists keep their mixtapes (somewhat) legal by releasing them gratis (in theory), traditionally as underground cassettes of urban streets, but nowadays as mp3 playlists on the internet. No royalties, no profits, no mess, and the artist grabs all the benefits of the mystique of the underground while showcasing his full range of creativity unfettered by silly copyright law. It's highly fascinating as a form, and among other things, shifts the focus of the listener - the hooks become decidedly secondary to the lyrical content and the vocal delivery / skills of the rapper.

And that is where Lil Wayne shines - he exhibits a mastery of a wide variety of vocal styles and delivers content from all over the hip-hop map. He's highly rhythmically inventive over a ridiculous variety of musical backdrops, rapping about everything under the sun. It's not even really worth it to cite the particular topics*, as 90% of the awesome lies in the delivery and syrupy flow from one non sequitur simile to another. The adequate description is that it's energetic, vibrant and more than a little real anger - there's a lively quality here that does not always show up in oft-posture-filled rapping. It must be heard to be appreciated, and since you can download the work for free, I'll just have you head that way to hear the genius. Lil Wayne repeatedly claims the title of "best rapper alive," and the virtuosity on display serves well to back that claim (as you can imagine, the act of taking someone else's hit song and (at least claiming to be) improving it lends itself to a fair amount of egotistical boasting, and Da Drought 3 is not lacking in that aspect). He might be right, at least regarding '07: the critical consensus is that in DD3 he has thrown down a mixtape double album that represents the height of the form.

* - Now is as good of a time to mention the elephant on the disc: the typical misogynist terms / content, rampant cursing, explicit sexual language and, notably, the frequent use of the phrase "no homo**," which is supposed to serve as a qualifier for anything remotely positive said about another male. Pretty difficult to address these things from the anglo-saxon vantage point without coming across as the prudish white dude who just doesn't get hip-hop culture, and fair enough, I don't, but that hardly excuses the overt hate that's spewed all over the genre (and by Lil Wayne especially - I don't think I'm being unfair in asserting that in a genre known for its explicit lyrics, Wayne is *relatively* foul-mouthed. Yikes). So, fair warning, the disc is littered with NSFW language, graphic descriptions and all that, and it's up for debate whether it's necessary, but I'd be a rather colossal hypocrite if I excused the misogyny inherent in G'n'R and didn't excuse it here. It's rough art, and I heartily support the artists' expression via this roughness, even if it admittedly makes me cringe a lot. That said, the disc is rife with myriad non-vulgar commentary, too, and the offensive language is, to me, worth stomaching.

** - The idea is that you toss in the phrase to make sure that even though you just said that your flow is "hard like an erection," everyone is entirely clear that you mean this in an entirely non-homosexual erection kinda way. It's offensive and also carries a little lady doth protesting too much vibe, IRONICALLY. Funny story, though, is that when I was at the Sackler conference a few weeks back, one of the lecturers kept trying to qualify which fossil specimens were hominid and which ones weren't. He showed a slide with four samples and said "homo habilis, homo neanderthalensis , homo sapien, homo erectus," and then switched to a chimpanzee slide for comparison and said, "no homo here." So apparently the expression has at least somewhat crossed disciplines. :)

Far be it from me to comment coherently on hip-hop, and I certainly lack the knowledge of mixtape history to verify the critical claims. Heck, I don't really have that great of a grasp on the borrowed hit beats that Wayne has utilized, so I can't really even confidently say that he has improved on originals. I can say, though, that for me, the experience is one of highly entertaining, funny and engaging poetry. Wayne's rhymes are riddled with references from all over the popular landscape, from TV to sports to old Prince tunes to New Orleans political commentary. It's a rich listening experience, rewarding on repeated listens, and the mixtape format makes forces me out of my comfort zone by requiring me to ignore the hooks and really concentrate on lyrics to appreciate it. The 100 minute double album-ness of it is, predictably, a little excessive, and it's not wall-to-wall greatness. But there is more than enough going on here to make this worth the time investment - in fact, I think the insane variety of what is going on over the course of this disc is what has garnered it so much praise - it's a cool chance to hear what a mic-virtuoso can do. As referenced, it's not for the faint of heart, but if you can find some time to sit down with a pair of headphones and really concentrate on the poetry, you'll be impressed by the skill and even get a little snicker or two out of the left turns the lines often take. If you only listen to one hip-hop mixtape with lines about Tim Duncan and the Toronto Maple Leafs this year, make this one it.

Status: Recommended (solid)
Nyet's Fave: "Upgrade," "We Takin Over (Remix)"