Five albums in, and many more to come for the relatively new group. Mos Eisley, the group's lead rapper, as Sweatshop is a group of four independents + Kyprios, carries the same beat in the voice, and swagger in the step as many of the great underground's, Lupe, Mos Def, Talib, Nas, and Obie Trice. From "Water Street", Sweatshop Union's "Oh My" won in the 8th Annual Independent Hip-Hop award. Best of the best to come out of British Columbia and Vancouver. For being primarily considered underground rap, Sweatshop Union, definitely proves it worth on this album. And it makes you think the proposition of a Rebirth II might not be so awful. The track is diabolical and political, recalling Ice Cube in his early-90s prime. And, on the same day Rebirth saw release, Wayne also put out a brand new non-album cut called "Fuck Today" that combines rap and rock with more aplomb than anything on the new LP. His still-impressive productivity rate also cushions the blow- thanks to No Ceilings, we know the guy's rapping abilities are still sharp. In that more ideological and less critical mindset, Rebirth is an oddball win. A big part of his magnetism relies on unpredictability and his willingness to reside in a personal realm where trends, gimmicks, and gravity are of little concern. "Confidence is the stain they can't wipe off," he says on the record, and he's right.
The choice to cannibalize two of rock's least respectable styles against each other makes zero sense, and is especially surprising from someone obsessed with André 3000, whose similarly risky 2003 genre switch up, The Love Below, wisely borrowed from Prince more than Evanescence.īut even with Rebirth's crushing lows- and Wayne's imminent jail sentence thanks to a guilty plea on attempted gun possession charges- there is little reason to doubt the 27-year-old's future as an enterprising, Grammy-highlighting superstar of the most esteemed set. Understandably, the combination can be abhorrent. According to Wayne, rock music combines the coked-out idiocy of Sunset Strip hair metal with the processed rage of Bizkit-ed headbanging.
Instead of next-level clever punchlines-inside-of-punchlines we get pure high-school inanity or swear parades deserving of a soapy mouthwash. So instead of rapping we get gurgled Auto-Tune chirps and squeals that often nullify his one-in-a-billion elastic croak. "Drop the World" also contains another key lyric from Wayne: "The spot get smaller and I get bigger/ Tryin' to get in where I fit in, no room for a nigga." The lines hint at the notion of Rebirth being something of a cop-out, i.e., if he can't top himself, he's just going to scratch away everything that makes him great. The closest he comes to an answer to that question is on "Drop the World", where he combats paranoia by threatening to "pick the world up and drop it on your fuckin' head!" It's a hilarious image that would serve as an incredible exaggerated parody of Linkin Park angst if the song wasn't dead serious- a fact confirmed by a martyr-me guest shot from Eminem, who himself still sounds like he's coming to grips with the fact that he'll never be as famous as he once was. "Call me crazy, I've been called worse/ It's like I have it all, but what's it all worth?" asks Wayne on "Paradice", a Miltonian epic about the trappings of super stardom that aims for Axl Rose, Use Your Illusion-style heights. He may never have a single as big as "Lollipop" or reach the level of universal relevancy to warrant another prime time interview with Katie Couric. Although his recent mixtape was dubbed No Ceilings, the pressure of success and the idea that he'll never top the million-in-a-week phenomenon that was Tha Carter III is naturally weighing on Wayne. That flip says as much about hip-hop's current state of evolution (shaky) as it does about Lil Wayne's current commercial predicament. Now, one of the world's biggest rappers is using the same tools to make a niche record only a diehard could truly love. used distorted guitars and stadium-rock drums to help break hip-hop into the mainstream.
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