Lil Wayne - Rebirth

Lil Wayne’s been trying on rock star clothes as of late, noodling on a guitar at concerts and singing in an Auto-Tune-heavy croak. It’s an ill-fitting persona, one that makes Weezy seem more delusional than innovative. Rebirth, his much delayed yet hardly anticipated rock album, reinforces the notion that he should stick to his day job.

Perhaps most surprising is Wayne’s taste, or lack thereof, in rock music. Rebirth sounds alternately like Korn and Sum 41, and if that leaves you scratching your head, it should. At no point does Wayne approach anything that has been stylistically relevant in the past 10 years. Nostalgia isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but I can’t say I long for the days when Fred Durst was a household name. Even in his funniest, most imaginative form, Wayne couldn’t save what is essentially a rehash of interminable nu-metal.

To make matters worse, Wayne compounds the banality of Rebirth’s concept with some dreadful punch lines. Weezy didn’t ascend to the “greatest rapper alive” designation with lines like, “I’m loved and praised in the U.S.A./My ancestors were slaves in the U.S.A./But not today, it’s alright,” from “American Star.” On “The Price is Wrong” and in one of the least-inspired takes on teenage romance in recent memory, Wayne sings, “She stole my heart/She ran away/Now I’m heartless/So f--- her anyway,” leaving us to wonder if this is even the same guy who made Tha Carter III. Every ounce of Wayne’s creativity and humor is completely zapped from Rebirth to the point where you wonder if Kid Rock somehow inhabited Wayne’s body after No Ceilings came out. 

Wayne’s trading on a lot of the capital he’s built up the last few years; if Wayne’s name wasn’t on Rebirth, it almost certainly would never have seen the light of day. Even as is, the album was scheduled for release almost a year ago, leaving us to wonder just how much worse this could have been.

There’s an unavoidable conceit in a rap superstar crossing over into a new genre, but making a worthwhile product isn’t out of the question—witness Kanye West’s 808s and Heartbreak, a thoughtful album that works in spite of its flaws. Here, Weezy offers no new perspective and breaks no new ground, instead sticking trite, undercooked rhymes to a warmed-over Linkin Park template.