okay so the skinny jeans didn't work out for me so well …

Trying to stay above the fray while proving to old heads that he is indeed as good if not better than those legendary rappers, his attempts at winning the hearts and minds of his harshest critics is when things really start to get interesting. Lil’ Wayne was never necessarily a bad rapper in anyone’s minds, but few want to conceded that he is the best rapper out there. Personally, I had to go from, okay he’s not the best rapper, as there are clearly more interesting underground artists but as far as the mainstream is concerned he has the be most enigmatic, erratic, emotionally complex rapper we’ve seen in some time.

You don’t want to admit that Wayne is one of the hottest rappers, next to Soulja Boy, who mainly has the attention of tweens and adolescents that are sick of hearing yet but another pretentious rapper. Soulja Boy offers fun, ignorance, and good times all the while disrespecting women in imaginative ways and fusing his raps out of using dance moves as metaphors. The bottom line is that you aren’t really clear whether he is talking about women or dancing with a lot of his lines, yet he has found a way to resurface that angst found in crunk music leaving Lil’ John in his wake. He is that Bone Crusher for the new generation, but not so serious until you his other records that aren’t mainstream that aren’t meant for radio airplay. Unless you’ve heard those you’re totally missing the point.

Lil’ Wayne on the other hand does want to be better than those legendary nineties rappers. Pound for pound it’s difficult to dispute if he really is, one of the primary criticisms of Wayne is that he had no legendary albums. But now that Tha Carter 3 has received four and a half stars from Rolling Stones, features a line up from some of the hottest producers in the game and has Wayne trying to outdo himself from the days of old radio classics like “Go DJ”, a summer hit a few years back in 2004 off of the first iteration of Tha Carter, classic 106 and Park material, through definitively mainstream records like “Lollipop” you have to take another look at this young artist.

Over there at Rolling Stone the writer tried to slip in the suggestion that “Lollipop” was not only the hottest record of the summer but one of the hottest summer hip-hop anthems in general, which is reaching a bit. But it does suggest that Wayne shows he is adept at creating those summer records for his female fans without loosing any of his integrity, which is exactly the point. Biggie’s career blew up off of records for the women and hardcore records for everyone else almost simultaneously. With Tupac you often heard the same love and confrontational hostility off of the same record as he was able to switch between the two modes, almost in the same verse. A love record was not without references to the gangster bravado and references to politics.

We haven’t seen that yet with Lil’ Wayne. On the other hand, Wayne often sells without reaching any farther lyrically with concern to intellectual curiosity than he has to. Wayne keeps rap very simple; nineties style wordplay with early eighties depth ensures that everyone can respect his sick wordplay but doesn’t alienate anyone whatsoever. That is the issue at hand, when you’re over 25 you’re not supposed to like anyone like Wayne. You want the next Public Enemy, someone talking about dodging the draft and starting a prison riot, only this time over serving in Iraq instead of whatever war Chuck D was talking about. You like Kanye West because he is self-righteous and at least has the pretension to want to talk about something, yet only offers his own emotional complexity as subject matter, atypical of many of middle class college dropouts out there.

So when you’re forced with having to choose between Lil’ Wayne and Soulja Boy as the next rap artists to take over the mainstream charts you’re conflicted. The former has been in the game since at least 1997, and the latter is a freshman who has been exploiting social networks for a good two years and building up his audience through the grassroots. Speaking of Kayne West, he dubbed Lil’ Wayne as a God, which is interesting considering he considers his own travails as being those of the son of God, Jesus Christ himself. I think we get the point though.

Let’s also take into consideration the authority that Rolling Stone has become in mainstream music, even over magazines like The Source and Vibe, whose pens only offer up commentary with a fraction of the intensity that Rolling Stone brings. West’s Late Registration record received 5 stars, which puts it in the company of such great records like N.W.A. Straight Outta Compton and Beastie Boys: To The 5 Boroughs. You’re hard pressed not to give Straight Outta Compton 5 stars yourself, unless you just have that much of a problem with gangsta rap, and To The 5 Boroughs is yet another ambiguous artistic effort by a band that is probably the most quintessential definition of what hip-hop is, yet is continuously overlooked because a lot of their records aren’t actually rap songs, but share a lot with hip-hop in other ways.

On the other hand, Hip Hop Is Dead by Nas only received 4 stars, and for good reason. While it was a beautiful comeback effort from the lyrically tough yet artistically and musically dead double disc that preceded it this album was far from the classics that Nas had offered years ago. It wasn’t Illmatic, though it may stand better than his yet to be released album that was titled N*gga but renamed.

There are a plethora of highly ranked hip-hop albums in the mainstream media of mainstream records. While true hip-hop heads do not want to place any mainstream record in their top 5 some albums are undeniable. Given the melancholy and weak offerings of most critics of both Lil’ Wayne and Soulja Boy as they rarely offer a viable alternative themselves it’s easy to see how Lil’ Wayne managed to sneak in a great review in a magazine that was the MTV of music journalism; not really wanting to review hip-hop records in the first place, and unduly tough on the records they did review.

With them you have to beat out artists that are not just the next best thing, but have had top albums consistently or are seen as the artists of their decade. Right now we’re still disputing whether or not Lil’ Wayne is indeed the artist of this millennium, which we just figured would have been either Jay-Z or 50 Cent. The former is just plain out uninspired and the latter more thoroughly contradicted himself by recording with Justin Timberlake and Ciara than he did having aggressively positioned himself with tweens through his vehement attacks on Ja Rule which were classic 106 and Park material when they aired. We want someone that isn’t hating someone just because no one really knows who he is, we need someone that isn’t sick of the rap game but is still recording to keep his rep up because everyone else is trying to pounce on his title while he is away, this summer it seems that we need Lil’ Wayne. Everywhere you go, if you hear a loud system via means of amplifiers too big for the electrical systems of the cars running them you’re hearing Lil’ Wayne. Perhaps the streets have spoken; Wayne himself has already left the building …