Lil Wayne: best rapper alive

Didn't think 'illest' rhymed with 'syphilis'?

By Jordan Sargent

Published May 1, 2007

Lil Wayne calls himself the best rapper alive. Is the claim debatable? Of course.

But Wayne, during the past year or so, has made about as strong a case as anybody in contemporary rap.

At the least, he has the highest quantity of evidence in his favor. Last year alone saw him release two of the best rap albums of 2006: the grossly underrated Birdman-assisted Like Father, Like Son, and the torrential (and mixtape pinnacle) Dedication 2. Since his 2005 career-defining (and last solo studio album) Tha Carter II, Wayne has put out something to the tune of more than 20 official or unofficial mixtapes. (And that doesn't even include his featured slots on other artists' singles and or appearance on remixes.)

In short, Wayne is a workhorse in every sense of the term — and damn if it isn't refreshing. Here is a guy who's hit his prime in an era where it's more fashionable to use rap than to love it, but Wayne is truly married to the game. He's said before that he wouldn't rap if he couldn't make money, but don't buy that. He isn't making a dime off these mixtapes, but he pumps them out at an assembly line pace.

What's more impressive than the love for his craft is the fact that every mixtape remains increasingly listenable. The aforementioned Dedication 2 is better than 95 percent of actual albums released in the past two or three years. In December, he made the Lil Weezyana Vol. 1 tape available for free on his Web site. It seemed like a sure throwaway, but instead, it features some of Wayne's best work to date.

Consider that Wayne has recorded and released something like more than 500 verses within the past year and a half, and there truly isn't a bad or average one among them.

So expecting Da Drought 3 to be anything less than exceptional would be foolish, and of course, it is exceptional. On the tape's 25 or so tracks, Wayne does what he does best: jack other rappers and singers' beats and reclaim them as his own with jaw-breaking punchlines and a flow that twists, turns, tumbles and crashes like the Mississippi River.

What's more, Da Drought 3 is even more evidence that Wayne remains as one of the only rappers in the game that still consistently challenges his listeners. Didn't think "illest" rhymed with "syphilis"? Well when Wayne announces that his flow is "nasty as see-why-phillus," it not only now rhymes, but it's pure genius.

And this isn't nonconforming for the sake of nonconforming. After listening to Da Drought 3, it becomes apparent that his genius is stream of conscious or even subconscious. Its almost as if Wayne's person is merely a mouthpiece for Wayne's uncontrollable brain, but to only say that Da Drought 3 is "cerebral" would be a crime.

It's cerebral, yes, but it's an artifact of a revolution brought on by one man who is displaying completely alien ways of addressing the mundane. For comparison, Juicy J says he's "on the scene, drinkin' lean." Wayne says: "A pint of that DJ Screw and that Hawaiian/ I am... leanin' like a three-legged lion."

Where you stand on old rap vs. new rap, or conscious rap vs. drug rap, or lyrics vs. flow, or the South vs. everybody else is completely irrelevant. Lil Wayne is not only the best rapper alive, but he's the best singular artist alive. And that, kids, is not hyperbole.