Review Summary: What the hell is a chopper?
In my downtime, I’ve found out two things about myself: Dark Souls destroys dorm-room relationships, and I’m a slave to the grind. I came to these conclusions after standing in the wreckage of another round of breaking controllers. Simply put: Dark Souls can lick a horses butt. To distract myself, I picked up Infinity Blade, an iPhone breakout hit that is similar in theme, but different in execution. Players were tasked with, ahem, ~fingering~ their way through a roughly twenty minute course of paladins and knights that want to eat you. After getting impaled by the last boss, you die and your son takes up your fight and the game resets. It’s an endless cycle; you are in a perpetual war against an enemy against which you have no chance. Level grinding, or fighting many monsters to build experience, is necessary. The game then lulls itself into a very predictable pattern; a dragon eats your leg, you stab a troll in the head, wash, rinse, repeat.
What is the point of all this?
Although it’s important to note that I listened to Lil’ Wayne’s Tha Carter IV (TC4) during the course of the game, there are definite similarities between the two works that perfectly summarize my feelings about both. Presented with such a glorious two-birds-one-stone situation, I will outline why TC4 is a rather solid hip-hop outing by the man with the lighter, albeit plagued by repetition.
The album begins with a beat that is a familiar theme throughout the album. It is also featured on the interlude (which will be mentioned later) and outro. After this, I honestly have no idea what happened. That’s not entirely true, I was mostly conscious, but there were certainly stretches during which I definitely thought the knight was auto tuned. After Blunt Blowin’ (a common theme on the album), I was pretty anesthetized until Interlude. 6 foot 7 foot caught my attention for a minute, and then lost me. The album was a minefield for those with ADD.
Although my sound production technology credentials are somewhat spotty, I can point my finger towards the production’s end of this record as the Valium at work. There are certainly a few exceptions, but some of the beats are simply boring, rarely ebbing from the template for beats that Atlantic Records seems to have invented. Wayne’s performance himself is very hit or miss, "Woke up, dick rock hard. Ashed my blunt in my Grammy award." This was was one bit that had me giggling in particular. On the other hand, various floods of n-words, women, etc. eventually grow tiresome to the point of sleep. While some tunes are certainly worthy of laughs (which, ultimately, I believe the album aims for), other lyrics turns the casual hip-hop listener off.
There are also some tracks that are notable and definitely worthy of Wayne’s hip-hop cred. Interlude specifically is fantastic, as Tech N9ne absolutely destroys his verse with precision and flow. Abortion is an alright track, although I still I have no idea what it is about (Wayne's auto-tuned vocals do not help with this). John is the beat of the album with an energy that almost sounds like a very kitschy Power Rangers background score. Bruno Mars does his usual good work on Mirror that comes with the deluxe edition. Also, several tracks feature rappers going at a superhuman pace which is something that, at least, I enjoy. The album certainly has a few bangers.
Either way, there were certainly moments I enjoyed during TC4. President Carter was a genuinely eerie experience. Megaman was interesting just for how much cursing is in the song. Also I almost see a genuine side of Wayne that at least doesn’t cast him as a raging douchebag. The many different sides of Wayne: rapper, rocker, and even crooner come out to play on TC4, and you can at least tell that the man is having fun with what he’s doing, whether or not he remembers where he is when he wakes up tomorrow. Overall, the man with the lighter lit the world up again.
