Lil Wayne's "Rebirth", black rock, and modern music

by Marcus Dowling

If he could, Chuck Berry would slap DeWayne Carter in the face with his dingaling for this one.

It "leaked." And it damn sure doesn't make me think of Lenny Kravitz. Or Jimi Hendrix. Or Rick James. Maybe it made me think of Eddie Murphy. But "Party All the Time" even laps the Eminem duet "Drop the World." Black men invented rock music. But Lil Wayne successfully attempted to take the entire concept back 75 years to its conception.

Facing a one year jail sentence for criminal weapons possession, Lil Wayne certainly isn't looking for more bad press. But he's knee deep in it now. Rebirth, literally a rock album release in every way for hip hop's most prolific wordsmith, an expected first quarter of 2010 release, "shipped inadvertently," and is not the pride and joy of the internet. And as expected, it's bad. No worries, it's not bad in the sense that it's offensive to the eardrum. It isn't. Whomever the session musicians were that were hired to play with America's favorite codeine consumer are more than capable. In fact, on tracks like "Prom Queen," they salvage victory from the jaws of defeat, actually creating something a bit more than tolerable, hence it being the only single Universal Records reluctantly cosigned from the new direction of one of their cash cow artists. It's bad in the sense that it was unwarranted, unnecessary and a far better idea in theory plagued by slipshod execution.

Lil Wayne - Prom Queen Uploaded by UniversalMusicGroup. - Music videos, artist interviews, concerts and more.

Even more ignominious about the release is that it features a lack of something quite key to they success of a "rock album" by someone from FAR outside the genre. Rock producers. "Prom Queen" has a hook, but with lyrics like the eminently and sadly unforgettable "I love her fancy underwear," Weezy doesn't even make an attempt to approach rock music with even the slightest modicum of well honed, rock based preparation. The track is produced by yes, DJ Infamous and Drew Correa, who produced the amazing "Mr. Carter," but when it comes to, well, rock songs, appear to know a significant amount, but not even close to enough to be producers of note on a rock release from an artist who dominates the public eye. Cool and Dre, who, yes, produced one of my favorite hip hop jams of all time, "Hate It or Love It," for The Game and Mary J. Blige, are on this album, too, which is quite unfortunate. It's one thing for hip hop and rock to collaborate on an artistic level. Rap/rock collaborations are exciting this year, as Damon Dash's Blackroc album proved. But rappers and rap producers without a true rock mindset doing rock collaborations? A poor idea in theory, a poor idea in practice, and on this record, a poor idea in execution. It's almost as if Weezy's hubris as being the only "Martian" to reach the top of the charts went to his head and this unfortunate, unfortunate--yes, did I say unfortunate?--concept came to life.