When I want to make clear to people that I am an old person, I like to mention that I saw Lil Wayne when he was actually little.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s true. When I was a freshman in college at Tulane University nearly (gasp) two decades ago, I went to see a massive hometown New Orleans performance by the Cash Money Millionaires. Juvenile, Birdman, BG, Lil Wayne and the crew arrived over the ecstatic New Orleans Arena audience in a helicopter suspended from the ceiling, dumping dollar bills out of money bags onto the crowd by the hundreds.<\/p>\n
Weezy was 17, having just released his debut \u201cTha Block is Hot\u201d and the Hot Boys breakout \u201cGuerilla Warfare.\u201d But as I recall he mostly spent the night rapping behind the Big Tymers and Juvenile, who were the hottest thing in music anywhere at the time and true gods in New Orleans. Lil Wayne, at that point, was pretty much the goofy little brother of the crew with one solo hit in \u201cTha Block is Hot\u201d and his squad tracks from the Hot Boys records, who pulled his weight with genius wordplay in supporting parts.<\/p>\n
To have been a teenager in New Orleans at the moment that Cash Money and southern rap took over pop music was indescribably fun. When I get nostalgic, I look back on it the way the Jazz Age writers gush bittersweetly about Paris in the \u201920s or how East Coast baby boomers talk about New York\u2019s punk scene during the Ramones\u2019 CBGB era. Cash Money songs like \u201cBling Bling,\u201d \u201cWe On Fire,\u201d \u201cI Need a Hot Girl\u201d and \u201cBack That Azz Up\u201d are forever tattooed on my soul with clouded memories of grain alcohol Kool-Aid concoctions and early-morning Shakespeare classes.<\/p>\n
Most of his crowd at Buttermilk probably wasn\u2019t born yet on my long-ago night with the Cash Money crew in New Orleans.<\/p>\n
The Chicago-based DJ duo Louis the Child (Saturday at Buttermilk, Sunday at Belly Up) were alive then, but barely out of diapers. And they\u2019re at the other end of the X Games music festival spectrum, showcasing one of our newest pop culture phenomena in this EDM crew whose \u201cBetter Not\u201d took over the world in 2018. Their Saturday afternoon Buttermilk show will warm up the stage for the irrepressible hit-makers The Chainsmokers (Friday at Belly Up, Saturday at Buttermilk) who are the first act to make a return appearance on the X Games stage. The second act to become a two-time X Games headliner is Kygo (Thursday, Jan. 24, at Belly Up, Sunday at Buttermilk) whose sunny and laid-back tropical house vibe proved a perfect match for an X Games afternoon in 2016.<\/p>\n
All four concerts at the X Games outdoor venue are sold out. The Belly Up nights are sold out as well, except Louis the Child\u2019s Sunday performance ($95 to $195,\u00a0bellyupaspen.com<\/a>).<\/p>\n Lil Wayne, of course, was just getting started. He\u2019d leave his Hollygrove neighborhood for Miami and, beginning with \u201cTha Carter\u201d in 2004, start making a case for himself as the greatest rapper alive while building a mythology around himself that\u2019s helped make him a titanic figure in American pop culture (the national conversation about his\u00a0outfit at the college football championship game<\/a>\u00a0two weeks ago, if nothing else, proves we all very much care what Lil Wayne is up to).<\/p>\n But the astonishing thing about Lil Wayne in 2019 is that he\u2019s not a nostalgia act. His\u00a0much-anticipated and sold-out X Games Aspen shows<\/a>\u00a0(Friday, Jan. 25, at Buttermilk and Saturday, Jan. 26, at Belly Up) are unlikely to include throwback renditions of those old Cash Money songs that now sound positively ancient. Why would they? Lil Wayne has a new album in the long-thirsted-for \u201cTha Carter V\u201d that\u2019s full of bangers and runaway hits like \u201cUproar\u201d and mature entries like \u201cDon\u2019t Cry\u201d that would have been unthinkable during those old days of cheap drum machine effects and braggadocio.<\/p>\n