By Matt Ritchie, Assistant Arts Editor
Grade: B
Lil Wayne’s No Ceilings mix tape has recently seen an official release. The album was leaked prematurely before its Oct. 31, 2009 schedule. Following the leak, a higher quality version with four extra tracks was released. Although the bonus songs are nothing more than throwaways, this freestyle mix tape will draw any Lil Wayne fan deeper into his bizarre world.
Upon release, critics jumped onto his Martian persona and claimed it was the most spacey of his records yet. This seems to be an overstatement. What you get with No Ceilings is a freestyle mix tape that is entirely unpolished. His lyrics and beats don’t transport the listener into a far off galaxy. Instead it sounds just like the kind of record a rapper who is addicted to cough syrup would make.
For mainstream music fans, this record is alienating. Although Lil Wayne samples some well-known pop tunes such as The Black Eyed Peas “I Gotta Feeling” and Jay Z’s “D.O.A”, these songs are by far the worst on the album. When Lil Wayne opens “I Got No Ceilings” by singing “Tonight’s the night/I’m high as height”, listeners will either fall for his silly charm or dismiss the song as the ramblings of a mad man.
Lil Wayne takes his bigotry one step further (from his days of rapping “no homo” in between verses) on No Ceilings. On “Poke Her Face” he raps: “I made her fuck her friend/She said ‘Don’t call her a dyke’, well that’s gay”. It’s obvious Lil Wayne won’t be winning the position of Poet Laureate anytime soon.
With these ludicrous freestyles and obscene rapping, why is the album so hard to put down? For Lil Wayne fans and hip-hop fans the answer may be that this unpolished glorified freestyle record is pure fun. In a music scene dominated by polished beats and lyrics, Lil Wayne makes an catchy record that is even self-referential. On “That’s All I Have”, he says: “Let me start off by saying I don’t even like this beat”. Well, Lil Wayne, if you don’t like Tyga’s beat why are you rapping over it?
Perhaps it’s because Lil Wayne truly has no ceilings, and that is where his charm lies.
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