Lil Wayne - No Ceilings Review

No Ceilings. Nice title. Nice concept, too. Here's Wayne explaining it, on one of his new mixtape's blessedly few skits: "I would love for you to look up into the building and understand that there is no ceilings; there is only the sky." And in his case, it's true; Wayne's potential greatness seems to have no limit-- or if it does have a limit, it's difficult to say what it might be. Wayne's tough to evaluate because he's so very rarely operating at peak capacity. Whereas a classically great rapper (Ready to Die-era Biggie, say) might hammer his concepts straight on until he's bludgeoned them into atoms, Wayne barely ever has any concepts, hopscotching frantically but lazily between ideas and chasing digressions down gopher holes.

Wayne's digressive, distracted spirit is a huge part of what makes him great; even at his Carter II peak, he was always slippery and unpredictable and defiantly weird. But ever since he indisputably became the most popular rapper in the world last year, he's been in a strange zone, trusting his instincts to the point where he's now preparing to drop a whole album of somebody's idea of rock on us. And his instincts are, more often than not, bad. Add that to his purportedly staggering drug use and his upcoming prison sentence, and it's tough to tell just how far he could fall. Wayne's got no ceilings, but he's got no floors either....full text Now I know that this bad boy isn’t supposed to be released until this weekend, but my boy downloaded it off of 2DopeBoyz and he threw it my way. I hate getting stuff early, but since it was the full thing, I gave it a spin, and let me tell you, it is pretty damn awesome. Seems as though Weezy is taking a page out of T.I.’s book and just overloading the industry with music, and I am not going to complain about it! The tape features a total of seventeen tracks, some of which are original beats, others are form hit songs such as, “Wasted,” “D.O.A.” and “Run This Town“. The tape as a whole is just plain crazy, and you’d be straight up silly not to download it (When it is supposed to come out!). The tape is a great way for Weezy F. Baby to go out, and we all know that this will not be the last we hear from the New Orleans superstar. Anyway, peep the track listing below, and look for a link to surface on the site in the next couple of days (I don’t want to disrespect Weezy, especially if he wants the tape to come out later!)....full text Give Lil Wayne some credit. He treats his ability to rap as a craft on par with any other skill or trade. Practice makes perfect. Since striking out on his own as a solo artist some years ago, Wayne has probably recorded more songs and verses than many will in their entire career. The practice worked. The man has made his millions through almost complete saturation of the hip-hop radio and blog circuit. Scarcely a week goes by without a new track, feature or news of one. While No Ceilings is merely one of a plethora of Lil Wayne-related releases currently planned or already on the market, it is notable for breaking current hip-hop tradition by eschewing Auto-Tune. Just the man, the mic and the track....full text