Nothing That’s Written is to be Believed.

Some half-hatched thoughts about Lil’ Wayne in a minute, but first this nice interview snip:

How do you keep track of ideas?The good thing about that is that, thank God, I’m actually infatuated and in love with what I do, therefore I am what I do. So I never have to forget because I never have to remember, I just am. I don’t need to write stuff down.

What about your songs. You never write them down? I just say it. Say it when it gets in my head, the beat. Whatever comes in my mind at that moment.

So it’s always spontaneous? Of course. I believe anything other than that—then why go buy it? Then you could do it, she could do it.

I couldn’t do it even if I wrote it down. But you could read what’s on the paper, right? So basically anybody that could read could recite it. That takes something away from it. But if I walk up to a guy and say “Rap for me,” he’s going to say something. His characteristics or whatever. I’m going to get what I love about him, just from his presence. That’s why you never saw me rap no TV shows. Other rappers be having to rap after an interview. So can you spit something for us? They never ask me to do that because the interview is so compelling that they actually got Lil Wayne.

I always tell somebody that’s why I am good, that’s why I’m okay, because I’m being me, I’m doing me. Now the day I gotta write stuff down—no one can believe what’s written down. Perfect example: If I was a bum and I told you I had a mansion around the corner and three Bentleys and twenty-eight bitches in my house butt naked waiting for me, you wouldn’t believe me. I’d say you stink, say Get out my face, give him $100, and say Get the fuck.

But if there was a book that said, there was this bum with a mansion with twenty bitches in it, you’ll try to use it and put it toward real life. That’s why I don’t write nothing down. That’s why I don’t believe the Bible, nothing that’s written, because nothing that’s written is to be believed.”

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It makes sense that Wayne, a seat-of-the-pants seeming sort who’s in the celebrity stage called “diversification” right now, to take a stance contra preservation. I’m relatively certain that his life growing up didn’t offer a whole lot of stability, and his current nouveau riche status probably means that he’s not thinking about as much as spending. Most of all, his main moneymaker is his fickle stoner-ass brain and restless productivity. I mean, there’s no need to carve monuments to yourself when every third word you say ends up on Rapidshare.

But also: when you make your name by being a workaholic who releases in some form everything he does, you’re going to release a lot of crap. Wayne’s overall percentage is closer to “good” than most others, but then something like “Prom Queen” comes along. It leaked over the weekend (and it’s predictably laced with those ever-annoying robo-drops), and if you haven’t heard it, well, you can probably find it through Google. If you prefer to keep reading instead, I don’t blame you: it’s aggro-ass melodramatic mook-rock, and it’s pretty horrible.

But at the same time, that’s okay. I mean, Wayne’s star persona is more like a multiple-personality aggregator–Hype Machine for his head–than anything, and it’s up to fans to pick the good from the bad, not label heads, tastemakers, and so forth. He’s way beyond the point of “oeuvre,” in other words; it’s more an issue of where you hop on the train. As such, it’s not really too incredibly out of the ordinary for Wayne to record a sub Limp Bizkit track like this. As much as critics would often like to ascribe to him terms like “genius,” or even worse, to assume that “Prom Queen” is some sort of subversive satire, when it comes down to it, I mean, we all have multiple facets to our personalities, and one of Lil Wayne’s is that he’s a stoner dude who really, really, loves sports. Now I have no way of proving this, but I’d wager that maybe a good percentage of American stoner sports fans around my own age would think that “Prom Queen” is a completely fair, maybe even “good,” rock song. Guys who used to bro the fuck out to Rage Against the Machine in college, who bought Days of the New when it came out, and who’ve seen Wayne on ESPN and can’t avoid “A Milli” at the bar. “Prom Queen” is aggro and childish, but then again, so’s that guy who guns 6 Keystone Lights by halftime and ends up wanting to wrestle everyone. What I’m saying, I think, is that Lil Wayne wants to wrestle you.

No, actually what I’m saying is that Lil Wayne has really shitty taste in rock music, and that I probably wouldn’t want to jack anything from his iTunes or give him control of the CD player in the car on a roadtrip, at least unless he promised to not play that Staind song again. And again, I’m okay with that. Artists, especially those who release just about every fucking thing they do, aren’t infallible, and they’re prone to take bizarre chances that fall incredibly flat (see also: about half of Neil Young’s last 30 years). But Wayne’s also letting us watch his hubris as an ever-shifting, emergent narrative, often for no charge, and as long as he takes care of himself, and others, I’m paying attention.

I can’t think of how to work this in to my larger thing, so I’ll paste it below. It’s excerpted from an Oh Word post about the Shop Boyz’ 2007 hit “Party Like A Rockstar,” obviously one of the clear precursors for Wayne’s current dabbling. The writer makes a great point, one which still needs tons of elaboration, about intersections of power, race, and interpretation in pop music.

Ever since “Rappers Delight” blew up and label executives dismissed Hip Hop as “a fad” that would come and go like disco, white artists and comedians have had no qualms with appropriating rap music to terrible results. For every Chronicles of Narnia and Rage Against the Machine there were 10 Malibu’s Most Wanteds and Limp Bizkits: movies and bands that showed white people trying to be down (sarcastically or earnestly) and failing horribly in cringeworthy disasters. Even when these things were funny, you couldn’t help but feel the joke was at the expense of those who actually liked Hip Hop seeing as there was rarely the nuance or detail afforded to loving spoofs such as Spinal Tap ( rap’s got its own). So imagine my joy when I saw a bunch of perfectly ignant crunk kids accidentally pissing on the whole concept of mainstream punk-metal. By being just as clueless and careless as the average comedy writer or rock band dealing in rap signifiers (SAT word alert) they’ve turned the tables on a 25 years worth of bad jokes by white people.

Filed under: Hype Machine  Lil' Wayne  Party Like A Rockstar  Prom Queen  Shop Boyz