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I'll admit there's a healthy amount of "it's really over, huh?" smothering my opinion of Tha Carter IV, but I still agree with what I wrote at the time ( http://www.popmatters.com/review/146947-lil-wayne-tha-carter-iv/ ):
"…Here is Lil’ Wayne, one of hip-hop’s most exciting artists of the past decade, releasing an album worthy of L.A. Weekly releasing a 60 Worst Lil’ Wayne Lines on Tha Carter IV list with no more than four or five potentially passable inclusions. It feels rather like watching Allen Iverson attempt to play basketball in Turkey, or Memphis for that matter, and looking unfamiliarly out of place on the court. He constantly recycles concepts like “life’s a bitch”, “the F. is for” and other cliches as though they weren’t only fleetingly entertaining the first time he tried them, and he oftentimes abuses misdirection punchlines—as if “suck my greenlight” makes any sense to anyone."
Gave it a 4/10. The weight of expectations probably dropped that from a boring old five-r, but I would probably give this album a 6 for those same reasons. I've liked Black Portland but every other full Young Thug release I've heard gets way too grating at times. This is just a pure, smooth pop album that totally cashes in on the success of "Lifestyle". It's comfortably schizophrenic, and Thug's weird repetition shit like on "With That" is just baseline addictive if you let it in, in a way Wayne's super blunt choruses often weren't.
Thug's not as good a rapper as Lil' Wayne, but he's more fun right now, and he doesn't have any expectations dangling over his head to help him fuck anything up.
I'll take Wayne on Sorry 4 the Wait most of the time over Young Thug if I really think about my favorite tracks from that tape, but it wasn't as exciting to hear him put his take on hot beats, either. There were less esoteric choices, just more of a paint-by-numbers Wayne experience I've come to expect, dread and never fully prepare myself for.
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"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz
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