[SIZE=6]The rise and fall of one of hip-hop’s most complicated artists[/SIZE]
On Jan. 6, 2021, a sea of confederate banners, Make America Great Again hats, and flags embossed with the TRUMP 2020 logo punched through the glass of the U.S. Capitol and attempted a coup of the government. Someone reenacted George Floyd’s death on the Capitol steps and another person flew the confederate flag in the hall of the Capitol. In the chaos that ensued, multiple people were killed in lieu of showing support for the soon-to-be outgoing President Donald Trump, who maintains that the election was rigged since he lost.
A month prior, on Dec. 11, 2020, rapper Lil Wayne, whose real name is Dwayne Michael Carter Jr., pleaded guilty to felony gun charges and was scheduled to be sentenced to 10 years in prison. According to a Department of Justice press release, the charge stems from a December 2019 arrest, when Florida police searched his private plane and found a gold-plated Remington 1911, .45-caliber handgun loaded with six rounds of ammunition. And since Carter had already been convicted of a felony, his possession of the gun and ammunition was illegal. Not to mention he was in possession of cocaine, ecstasy, and oxycodone. He was scheduled to be sentenced on Jan. 28, but a pardon from former-President Trump allowed him to avoid jail time.
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Wayne, however, may have foreshadowed dodging a bullet for his actions just two months before.
In October, the 38-year-old posted a picture with the president, smiling. Not even caring that he was just being used for a photo-op, Lil Wayne tweeted the image with a caption that suggested for people to vote for the president’s re-election. After Trump’s four years of xenophobia and racist policies that have set the country back farther than any president has done in recent history, Lil Wayne’s public support of Trump was met with swift backlash levied at him. They both lost.
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To Black America, Wayne was at his lowest point — especially when it was hinted at the reason for this endorsement was to receive clemency for the aforementioned gun charge. And it worked. In the final hours of Trump’s presidency, he pardoned or commuted 143 sentences, including Wayne’s.
Fans were, and still are, disgusted at Wayne’s antics. “I’m surprised, but as usual, disappointed by the actions of Black male celebrity privilege,” says longtime fan Tarahgee Morris. For Bárbara Polanco, this has, presumably, ended her support of him. “I can’t respect and separate the person from the artist in his case after making such a tone-deaf decision in a year like 2020,” she says.
Lil Wayne called out President George W. Bush for his slow response to send aid to Hurricane Katrina victims in Wayne’s home state of Louisiana, leading the world to believe that the rapper was more politically-inclined than many thought to believe. This, along with the resulting success of his mixtapes led to his next album, Tha Carter III, selling over a million copies in the first week and Lil Wayne’s claims of being the “Best Rapper Alive” finally began to make sense. That’s widely considered one of his highest points because though he has appeared on countless classic singles in the time sense, released a number of mixtapes as well as two more Tha Carter albums and five other LPs, he has yet to reclaim that level of prominence and commercial appeal.
To say that Lil Wayne supported this man is indicative of just how far he’s fallen over the course of his mythical hip-hop career. He peaked when he could sell a million records in a week back in 2008, when his claim of being hip-hop’s “Best Rapper Alive” had merit. Now, he’s a shade of his former self, forever haunted by a fall that has to do more with his politics and worldview than a musical decline — though there are shades of that, too.
In the age of transparency between musicians and their fanbases, Lil Wayne has finally been exposed. This aspect of the rapper had never been truly unearthed because it’s not something that he addressed in prior interviews from before 2016 — mostly focusing on his music, his money, and his career. But with rappers becoming the biggest artists in the world who often double as public figures, the fact that he’s still one of rap’s most prolific recorders doesn’t matter. It’s his politics that are front and center.
There hasn’t been an artist with as huge of a fall — tied to their beliefs — as Lil Wayne. While his legacy isn’t called into question due to the accolades, the veracity of his claims and early lyricism can be called into question. But without the true answer to when he became so transformed with his beliefs, listening to him creates a lot of speculation that takes away from the music. How much of “Georgia Bush” was authentic and what was performative? It seems like the idea of Lil Wayne and what he represents has become better than the real thing.
https://www.spin.com/featured/lil-wayne-the-rise-and-fall/