Review Summary: This is one of two Lil Wayne "farewell" mixtapes before he serves his sentence for gun charges. This mixtape has some good moments, that - because the mixtape had to be rushed - are cancelled out by mediocre filler.
As you may or may not know, Lil Wayne is going to be serving a minimum-1 year sentence in jail as a result of pleading guilty to gun charges. (See the full story here http://www.sputnikmusic.com/news.php?newsid=11239#lastpost) And he is releasing two mixtapes before he serves his sentence – “Going In Before Going Away” and of course, this one. No Ceilings tops “Tha Carter III”, and even though that’s not saying much, it may be a sign that Lil Wayne is trying to revert to Tha Carter’s 1 and 2.
The choice of instrumentals on this mixtape is good. Lil Wayne uses well-heard-of beats that were on tracks such as “Wetter” by Twista, “Ice Cream Paint Job” by Dorrough, “Death of Autotune” by Jay-Z, and “Make Her Say” by Kid Cudi featuring Lady Gaga & Common. However, this just goes to show that Lil Wayne is a mainstream rapper, playing off of popularity and name recognition. But, remarkably, Lil Wayne actually improves most of the tracks he uses. For example: He demonstrates good lyricism on Ice Cream Paint Job, which brings me to my next point.
Lil Wayne comes up with some pretty good punchlines and rhymes on this tape. For example of Ice Cream Paint Job: “Bent over the girl put my hands on her ankles/And I’m all over this ice cream beat like sprinkles/Why thank you, if youse a hater/I’m eatin’ youse a waiter/Pistol on my hip, tomb raider/Holla at ya guala soon later.” On D.O.A “I’m in the zone like a fastball/And I *** the game up like a bad call.” And then on Make Her Say, “I poke her face, now she’s faceless/I poke her so much I deserve a bracelet.” He has tons of others like them. But he’s inconsistent. He follows the aforementioned two-liner on D.O.A with a terrible money rhyme and he repeated the above mentioned Make Her Say two-liner about twenty times throughout the songs. Wayne can be a good writer, but spitting some good rhymes and then following it with filler will not make him the consensus “best rappa alive”
Even though this is a decent mixtape, it features the typical hypocritical Weezy. He autotunes on the D.O.A instrumental, he makes some anti-gay innuendo (he kissed a man once), and he acts stupid and “smokes a blunt” during the first interlude when he pleaded guilty to gun charges just over a week ago. It's hard to take Lil Wayne seriously sometimes because he contradicts himself every now and then.
I’m not a Lil Wayne fan, but I have to admit he has talent. But, listening to him, he sounds like a talented rookie in the rap game. He has skill, but he needs to cut down on making mistakes like autotuning and following good rhymes up with blandness. But, this is forgivable because in all likelihood Lil Wayne had only a few days to record this before he gets locked up.
This mixtape has some good songs - like Break Up, I Think I Luv Her featuring Tyga, and Ice Cream Paint Job – and then songs that could be good, but are ruined by mediocre filler. This mixtape is bearable most of the time. But it’s not something that will make me miss Weezy when he’s locked up, anticipate his next album, rant about him being locked up, and/or say “Free Lil Wayne!” It’s available for download on DatPiff.
