The first installment of my weekly hip-hop column for Spin’s website is up, and it’s about Lil Wayne’s post-jail verses and the rather brilliant and touching way he’s confronted his jail-time. Namely, by not getting all sad-sack rapper about it and just rhyming really well. Read it! Argue about it! Thanks!
Though psychologically damaging and probably not all that reformative, prison isn’t a bad career move for a rapper. It feeds the hype machine, can help with street cred (which does still matter, even in this Officer Rick Ross era), and preps everybody for a big, got-through-it-all comeback.
See: Gucci Mane, at least until time in jail outweighed time spent in the recording studio. Also, T.I. on “I’m Back,” but less so on No Mercy, the rapper’s triumphant return that never was because dude got busted for smoking weed in broad daylight and went right back to jail (No Mercy was originally titled King Uncaged). Okay, so doing time is good for rappers who can stay on the straight and narrow once they get out, and make some good songs. It doesn’t work if people don’t give a shit about you, and that’s why Shyne has been out of luck since his release in 2009.
But people really give a shit about Lil Wayne. That’s why even his disastrous butt-rock experiment Rebirth went gold, and why I Am Not A Human Being, a decent odds-and-sods collection soaked in Drake guest spots, released while Wayne was in Riker’s Island for eight months on a gun charge, did pretty well too…
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