{"id":803810,"date":"2020-02-04T14:20:56","date_gmt":"2020-02-04T21:20:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/?p=946127"},"modified":"2020-02-04T14:20:56","modified_gmt":"2020-02-04T21:20:56","slug":"lil-wayne-sounds-like-the-best-rapper-alive-again-on-mahogany-and-mama-mia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/music-news\/lil-wayne-sounds-like-the-best-rapper-alive-again-on-mahogany-and-mama-mia\/","title":{"rendered":"Lil Wayne Sounds Like the Best Rapper Alive Again on \u2018Mahogany\u2019 and \u2018Mama Mia\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
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For 403 seconds near the start of his new album, Lil Wayne<\/a> makes Funeral<\/em><\/a> feel like a transmission from the past. As long as \u201cMahogany\u201d and \u201cMama Mia\u201d are playing, it\u2019s still 2006, the music industry is crumbling, and within the cinders of Cash Money is a young man who\u2019s ready to prove he\u2019s the very best at the singular thing he does for a living. Wayne was at his peak back then, regularly offering some of the most captivating run-on sentences in the English language. His jokes, metaphors, similes, patterns, ad-libs, melodies, screeches, and prolific mind-dumps were vehicles of sheer momentum. The man behind them was harnessing a rare velocity most musicians can never capture.<\/p>\n

A long time has passed since then, but on these two songs, Wayne offers something that honors his past while comfortably existing in the present. \u201cMahogany\u201d and \u201cMama Mia\u201d are multi-syllabic, mush-mouthed torrents of internal rhyme, where bad puns bleed into childish punchlines and hooks are mostly an afterthought. He sounds particularly at home atop the jittery sample of \u201cMahogany.\u201d Buoyed by his old Cash Money colleague Mannie Fresh and Sarcastic Sounds, Wayne raps about\u2026mahogany. That\u2019s it. By the second verse, Weezy is teetering on the edge as he tries to think of all of the ways he could use the word before his voice runs out of gas:<\/p>\n

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Mahogany dashboard, I do the dash, boy<\/em>
I think in my backyard, I need an airport<\/em>
Mahogany sand, boy, I start a sand storm<\/em>
Mahogany skin, touch me, I cut your hands off<\/em>
Mahogany door handle to match the floor panel<\/em>
Mahogany sand, mahogany Dior sandals<\/em>
Mahogany dash, slime, I do the dash, slime<\/em><\/p>\n

Part of the song\u2019s effectiveness comes from Mannie\u2019s knack for beats that move and shift without a clear center of gravity. Over the years, Wayne\u2019s ear for production has deteriorated, but on \u201cMahogany\u201d the chops, starts, stops, and changes in pitch help give him a foil for his voice.<\/p>\n