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Canwest News Service
REBIRTH,
Lil Wayne
Universal Records
—
If Boba Fett made a record with Nickelback, the results would be a lot like the new rock album from Lil Wayne. Using Playing With Fire, the worst song from 2008's Tha Carter III, as a starting point, this Nu-metal-meets-AutoTune gumbo never treads beyond its initial concept — "I'm a dope boy with a guitar" — and winds up with just a little less substance than a Twilight message board. Jay-Z scored a Grammy for D.O.A. (Death of AutoTune), but Wayne's album makes a better case for the banishment of the voice modulator than a thousand recordings by Jamie Foxx, Cher and T-Pain combined. This is the worst misfire since Axl Rose took to the stage without Slash.
The seventh studio album from the 27-year-old rapper from New Orleans opens with American Star, and immediately hits a bum note. Featuring a screeching, computerized Wayne vocal, the track sounds like Dirty Diana by Michael Jackson, and the mediocre, vaguely Eddie Van Halen-esque guitar solo would fail to impress in a junior varsity marching band. Lyrically, the song is Seinfeld — about nothing — and while Tha Carter III, the biggest, most lauded record of 2008, combined anger with skill and playfulness, Rebirth is almost pure rage. Songs like One Way Trip and Prom Queen sound like an angry 14-year-old venting about science class and acne.
Guests roped into the repetitive, derivative record include J.U.S.T.I. C.E. and Eminem, who performed the album's best song, Drop the World, with Lil Wayne at the Grammys on Sunday night. Eminem, who produced the song, sounds crisp and hungry and poised to once again become hip hop's leading voice. That voice once belonged to Lil Wayne, but on the rare occasions he does rap on this album, he's upstaged both by Eminem and Nicki Minaj, who also had the best rhymes on We Are Young Money, the pointless first release of Wayne's record label.
Outside of discs from Gorillaz and Andre 3000, the rock-rap hybrid has been difficult to master. Here, songs like The Price is Wrong and Ground Zero — with its insane chorus, "Let's jump off a building, baby" — are lifeless and locked in the worst parts of the '90s. Why would Lil Wayne want to sound like a bad cover version of Danko Jones? Even Kanye West and Rick Rubin would have a hard time turning these silly electronic rock songs into anything worthwhile.
On Sunday, the Saints will play in the Super Bowl, and New Orleans has been the site of epic comebacks before. But Lil Wayne is going to need to do something drastic to recover from his most recent record. He's lost in space and, what's worse, makes Chad Kroeger seem like a singer with soul.
