Lil Wayne shows us his rock n’ roll side with his seventh full-length album “Rebirth”. But with all the hype that surrounded this album, unfortunately the good thing to come out of this album was mostly all the hype and the collaborations.
ARTIST: Lil Wayne
DIGITAL ALBUM: Rebirth
LABEL: Cash Money
DURATION: 46:43
RELEASE DATE: February 2, 2010
- American Star
- Prom Queen
- Ground Zero
- Da Da Da
- Paradice
- Get A Life
- On Fire
- Drop the World
- Runnin
- One Way Trip
- Knockout
- The Price Is Wrong
When I heard that Lil Wayne was releasing a new full-length album that would showcase his rock n’ roll side, needless to say that I embraced it as I embraced Pat Boone’s cover of “Crazy Train” by Ozzy Osbourne. But there are people who have crossover to different genres. From Michelle Branch transitioning from rock to country and the Beastie Boys going from punk to hip hop, if the person or group has talent, then all power to them, I’m willing to give it a shot. And Lil Wayne is a talented hip hop artist, so I look forward to see how his album “Rebirth” would be.
There has been quite a bit of hype around this album. From collaborations with Fall Out boy, Eminem and Travis Barker, I figured that the album could be a quite interesting experiment for Lil Wayne. After listening to the album, there are some problems. For one, Lil Wayne’s rock vocals and the use of auto-tune just doesn’t work for rock music.
The hip hop, rock-infused tracks work well when he’s rapping, it’s just his rock-driven tracks don’t. Hip Hop tracks with a touch of rock such as “On Fire” and “Da Da Da” which he collaborates with producers Cool & Dre, “Drop the World” with Eminem, “One Way Trip” with Travis Barker work.
While tracks such as “Get a Life” (produced by That Bizness) and “Knockout” (produced by the J.U.S.T.I.C.E. League) has that blink-182 vibe are probably the most decent efforts on the track. In fact, I think it’s Young Money Entertainment’s Nicki Minaj that shines on “Knockout” rather than Lil Wayne and made me excited for her upcoming album. And then there are songs that just don’t work at all.  “Ground Zero” and The Price is Wrong”, just falls flat happens to be Lil Wayne’s worst vocal performance.
I know there are some artist who just have the itch to try something new and if it works, it’s all good. But if it doesn’t, we just hope they move on and go back to the music that fans love. And in this case, when Lil Wayne comes back, it’s for the hip hop because singing Blink-182 or Linkin Park style of tracks are definitely not his forte.