Jay-Z & Lil Wayne are still at the table
How two of hip-hop’s vets continue to shape my love for rap music
Growing up Black in the United States, I don’t feel like I ever had an experience of discovering hip-hop; more so, I feel like it happened to me. It was ingrained in the way my people spoke, how we dressed, the way we accessorized our cars, and even how we accessorized ourselves. In celebrating 50 years of hip-hop this month, I find myself thinking about two of the artists who have shaped my love for rap music the most: Jay-Z & Lil Wayne.
With 13 years in age between them, Hov & Weezy’s careers collectively span over half of hip-hop’s lifetime. They also represent two of the regions that have been most influential in rap’s growth: Jay-Z hailing from the U.S.’s East Coast — more specifically, Brooklyn, New York, not far from hip-hop’s birthplace in the Bronx — and Lil Wayne from New Orleans, Louisiana in what many lovingly call the “Dirty South.”
Their regional origins closely mirror mine. While most of my life was spent on the East Coast, I got to experience multiple facets of it. I was born in New York, lived most of my childhood in Maryland, and then my family and I moved down south to North Carolina. During those first few years in N.C., the son of one of my mom’s friends — an older high schooler — introduced me to downloading music on Limewire and burning those songs to blank CDs. His favorite artist was Lil Wayne.
I’ll never forget when he showed me “They Still Like Me” and “Walk It Off” from Dedication 2. That was my first time learning about mixtapes. I couldn’t believe rappers were just giving away their music for free and rapping over beats from songs I heard on the radio. On “They Still Like Me,” Lil Wayne rapped over Dem Franchize Boyz’s “I Think They Like Me,” and the lyrics were out of this world. I still can’t help but smile whenever Wayne raps, “Name still buzzing even when I’m doing nothing / But I’m never doing nothing ’cause I’m always getting money.”
After hearing those tracks, there was no way I couldn’t listen to whatever Lil Wayne put out next — and I’m glad I did because the project that followed Dedication 2 was Da Drought 3, my all-time favorite mixtape. Da Drought 3 was a “culmination of the previous three years,” wrote Brad Callas in 2017, 10 years after the mixtape’s release. He described that span from 2004–07 as a “period when Wayne cemented his role as Hip-hop’s workaholic by oversaturating the marketing with 9 projects.”
In that time, Lil Wayne released multiple mixtapes, including the first two installments of his Dedication series, his first two albums in Tha Carter series, and a joint album with his mentor and father figure Birdman. With every release, the quality was strong. And with Da Drought 3, Wayne was skyrocketing toward the peak of his powers.
The mixtape is two discs, which wasn’t Lil Wayne’s intention. “The radio be on and whatever song comes on, add that instrumental to it,” he told MTV. That’s how Wayne ended up kicking off Da Drought 3 rapping over MIMS’ “This Is Why I’m Hot” before decimating beats like Rich Boy’s “Throw Some D’s,” Mike Jones’ “Mr. Jones,” and Nas’ “If I Ruled the World.” And that’s just on disc one.
On the second disc, Lil Wayne puts his touch on songs such as Young Jeezy’s “I Luv It,” Young Dro’s “Shoulder Lean,” and Jibbs’ “King Kong.” Although each song started as someone else’s, they’re Wayne’s when he’s finished with them. That includes two tracks originally starring Jay-Z: “Upgrade U,” a collaboration between Hov and his wife Beyoncé, and “Show Me What You Got,” the first single from Jay-Z’s post retirement album, Kingdom Come.
At this time, Lil Wayne, who has gone on record as saying Jay-Z was the emcee he aspired toward, considered himself the “best rapper alive,” a title often reserved for Hov after the deaths of Biggie and 2Pac. On the outro for “Bring It Back” from Weezy’s first Tha Carter album, he boldly declared he was “the best rapper alive since the best rapper retired,” referring to Jay-Z. Wayne reiterated that statement as a public service announcement at the beginning of “Dough Is What I Got,” his rendition of Jay-Z’s “Show Me What You Got.”
Lil Wayne went on to rap:
“When it comes down to this recording
I must be LeBron James if he’s Jordan
No — I won rings with my performance
I’m more Kobe Bryant of an artist”
This is a callback to the original song when Jay-Z stated, “I am the Mike Jordan of recordin’.” And honestly, it was hard to tell the two apart the night of September 11, 2009 when Hov simulcasted his “Answer the Call” concert in front of a sold-out crowd at Madison Square Garden. Michael Jordan loved playing at the Garden and had some of his most iconic performances there. “This is where you come to see the best basketball played,” Jordan told SLAM Magazine in 1997. And when I randomly flipped to Fuse TV on my Grandma Gwen’s television and came across Jay-Z doing a live arena show to celebrate the release of his latest album, The Blueprint 3, and the eight anniversary of his first Blueprint album, I didn’t realize I was witnessing a canon event.
The night was star-studded, including appearances from artists such as Beyoncé, Rihanna, and Kanye West. But two moments stick out to me the most. First is when Jay-Z brought out Kid Cudi to help him perform “Already Home” from Blueprint 3, and Cudi strolled out goofily swinging his arms back and forth. One of the things I appreciate about Jay-Z is how he embraces younger artists. On Blueprint 3, in addition to featuring Cudi, Hov highlights two other hot new rappers at the time: Drake and the first artist Jay-Z signed to his Roc Nation label, J. Cole.
The other moment from Jay-Z’s “Answer the Call” show I still think about is when he performed “U Don’t Know” from his first Blueprint album backed by John Mayer on guitar. Immediately following the song, Mayer went into a medley of guitar riffs covering different Jay-Z songs from “‘03 Bonnie & Clyde” to “Run This Town” to “Dirt Off Your Shoulder” before settling on “D.O.A. (Death of Autotune),” the lead single from Blueprint 3.
I remember kids from my predominantly white Christian school started getting into John Mayer after his 2008 live album, “Where The Light Is,” which featured his cover of Tom Petty’s “Free Fallin’.” Seeing Mayer on stage with Jay-Z represented a collision of my worlds, a reminder that hip-hop and rock could coexist and even make each other better when done right. To this day, one of my favorite Jay-Z songs is his “Numb/Encore” mashup with Linkin Park.
Lil Wayne was absent from the stage that night. But during 2007–09, you couldn’t escape him. In 2008, Wayne released Tha Carter III to much anticipation. It debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200 and sold over one million copies in the first week, making it one of the fastest-selling albums in the United States. Years after Lil Wayne first announced he was the best rapper alive, many began believing it. I know I did. I begged my Grandma Gwen to take me to FYE so I could buy the new album.
When I saw Jay-Z featured on the second track, titled “Mr. Carter,” I thought we’d finally get to settle the debate of who was the better rapper. One song to end it all. Instead, we got something more meaningful — a passing of the torch. Both sharing the last name Carter, Weezy and Hov answered the call, “Hey Mr. Carter, tell me where have you been?” with “Around the world, now I’m back again.”
At this point in their careers, Lil Wayne and Jay-Z had ascended to rap’s biggest stage. They had performed in front of hundreds of thousands of people all over the globe and were still rapping at a high level. They were at a place similar to the MJ vs. LeBron GOAT debate where people had to start splitting straws to put one over the other. Hov and Weezy weren’t worried about that. They knew their place in history.
Jay-Z begins his verse on “Mr. Carter” recognizing Lil Wayne as his heir. “Young Carter, go farther, go further, go harder,” he raps. “Is that not why we came? And if not, then why bother?” Hov recognized the mark of a great legacy as helping those who come after him achieve as much as he did, if not more. In hip-hop’s 50 years, its contributors have seen themselves as part of a lineage. They value those who came before them regardless of genre.
So much of hip-hop production is sampling, which Earl Sweatshirt described as “showing who you are… showing what your influences are… showing how you grew up.” He continues, “The realest one is you’re trying to pay homage to the thing, so you’re honoring it with those details.”
I didn’t realize it until researching for this essay, but Lil Wayne’s outro on “Mr. Carter” isn’t his own words. They’re Jay-Z’s. More specifically, they’re part of Hov’s first verse on Wayne’s favorite song, “Lucky Me” from Jay-Z’s second album, In My Lifetime, Vol. 1. “I actually have ‘Lucky Me’ tattooed on my neck, and I have a verse of that song tattooed on my leg,” he told People Magazine.
In the outro of “Mr. Carter,” Lil Wayne raps:
“And I swear to everything, when I leave this Earth
It’s gonna be on both feet, never knees in the dirt
And you can try me, fucker, but when I squeeze, it hurt
Fine, we’ll lose two lives; yours and mine
Give me any amount of time, don’t let Ms. Carter grieve
At the funeral parlor, drippin’ tears down my sleeve
Give me any amount of time, don’t let Ms. Carter grieve”
Grief is an interesting word when it comes to hip-hop. In a lot of ways, it’s an art form of constant grief. Grieving the communities our people call home, grieving the surveillance of our people and the violence we consistently face by the state, grieving those who died too young and the premonition of death lying around the corner at any given moment. “From hip-hop’s inception, what has distinguished it from other forms of youth culture was its certain awareness of mortality,” wrote Jelani Cobb for the New Yorker.
But I didn’t expect to grieve the loss of how I once perceived my favorite artists. Where there’s a disparity between what young Black men have been told to look for in role models and the figures media elevates, rappers and athletes tend to fill the gap. I didn’t just listen to songs from my favorite artists; I wanted to be them. While knowing I shouldn’t do everything they did, they were often my voices of reason. As I got older, it became harder to justify or overlook my favorite rappers’ words and actions. My worldview also began to shift. What I once saw as harmless at best, I began to understand as antagonistic to my people’s struggles for liberation.
Jay-Z traded in oversized tees and baggy jeans for tailored suits and became hip-hop’s face of Black wealth, urging Black people to embrace their “buying power,” which Dr. Jared A. Ball described as “a myth.” Ball said this myth “functions as propaganda working to deny the reality of structural, intentional and necessary economic inequality required to maintain society as it is, one that benefits an increasingly decreasing number of people.” As Jay-Z advocates for increased wealth for him, his family, and those in his economic class, poverty is maintained and bolstered for more people that look like him.
This embrace of the capitalist class was also displayed in Lil Wayne’s endorsement of Donald Trump for president ahead of the 2020 presidential election. Despite Wayne’s denial, it is speculated that he endorsed Trump as part of a deal in which the former president pardoned him from facing up to 10 years in prison over firearm charges. Lil Wayne was willing to throw his support behind a racist president in order to free himself, citing, “[Trump] listened to what he had to say… and assured he will and can get it done.”
I don’t view Jay-Z and Lil Wayne as role models, nor do I choose to put that much stock in any celebrity anymore. But I do view Hov and Weezy as a reflection of how hip-hop has evolved over the years. Music that once defied the state now smiles next to it, two thumbs in the air, posing for the next photo opp. And still, I got emotional during this year’s GRAMMYs watching Lil Wayne and Jay-Z sit at the same table for a performance of DJ Khaled’s mega hit, “GOD DID,” a song that includes a four-minute Jay-Z verse.
During the performance, Lil Wayne raps along with Jay-Z like the kid still looking up to the rapper he always wanted to be, who he always wanted to be in the conversation with. During his last verse on “Mr. Carter,” Lil Wayne raps, “And next time you mention Pac, Biggie, or Jay-Z / Don’t forget Weezy, baby!” And Jay-Z doesn’t. In fact, the first name he says after finishing his “GOD DID” verse is Wayne’s. “Lil Weezyana!” Jay-Z yells — a nickname that pays homage to Weezy’s home state of Louisiana and the Dirty South that birthed him.
In a rare moment of weakness, Jay-Z questioned his place in hip-hop after hearing Lil Wayne freestyle over “Show Me What You Got” on Da Drought 3. The “GOD DID” performance shows us they’re still at the table, seated at their respective thrones. And they see each other. They recognize how they’ve impacted the game and stay ready to pass their torches to whoever comes next — or remind everyone who the fuck they are.
Hey Mr. Carter, tell me where have you been? Around the world, and we’re back again. And I swear to everything, when they leave this Earth, it’s gonna be on both feet, never knees in the dirt.
My best rappers alive.
Before you go, here’s a playlist inspired by this essay:
