Cool Story Bro: How I Starred In Lil Wayne's Movie

This weekend we had a party at my flat and at about two million o'clock someone put on "A Milli." When was the last time you actually listened to it? It's great. We heard that he'd been arrested and stuck it on to celebrate, I dunno, Lil Wayne beating people up with skateboards.

Around the time of Tha Carter III, it became kind of trendy to be over Lil Wayne. He'd reached that awkward stage in a rapper's career when British broadsheet journalists queue up to find new ways to write them into a liberal tableau. Basically, it turns out that silly things like not-objectifying-women matter less to most music journalists than being in with the cool rap guy who makes music it's fun to dance to. AND QUITE RIGHT TOO; after all liberty comes and goes, but a good jam lasts forever.

Anyway, back in 2008, when Tha Carter III came out, I was a journalist working at a music magazine, going around telling everyone that Lil Wayne was cool and that basically all rappers ever were probably being metaphorical whenever they were being sexist / violent / homophobic, and that everyone should get off their high horse and join me in the gutter.

I managed to convince my editor to send me to Amsterdam to meet Weezy by basically walking about the office shouting "He's the greatest rapper alive! You can shove your landfill indie up your arse, me and Wayne are the future, you are the past!" (I hadn't ever actually listened to Wayne much before, but I thought it would be fun thing to write about. Funner than the new Futureheads album, anyway.)

I flew to Amsterdam - iPod full of Weezy records which I really didn't get – and went to a cafe to meet Wayne. Every douchebag in Holland was there, wearing suits, licking Weezy lollipops and staring at the waitress honeys, waiting for the Lil guy. After a few hours a hummer rolled up outside the joint and Birdman got out. "Oh right, this is the guy Wayne made out with right?" I said to someone. "NONONONONONONO!" they replied with their head in their hands. "But I saw that picture of them making out?" "No you didn't, you're an idiot. Look at that photo again, it's just a weird angle." "Hmmm." My liberal agenda was getting carried away.

Anyway, I sat down with Birdman and quickly realized that I didn't want to suggest that he was dating Wayne. He was wearing a necklace worth half a million dollars. I imagine I was wearing a Lightspeed Champion t-shirt or something. I can't remember anything he said, but he was nice enough, a little intimidating, but only really because the room was a hotbox and I was quickly running out of things to ask him.

That ended and we waited for Wayne. We waited for seven hours or something and then someone said we had to go to his hotel and meet him there.

Guess what? Weezy wasn't staying in a shitty hotel! In fact, when we got there his team had taken over the massive, ancient ballroom. I sat in there, under the ornate buttresses, with his manager, his press officer, his European press officer, his UK press officer, a camera crew, and about 20 of his friends smoking blunts.

Eventually he turned up. There were a couple of Dutch journalists talking to him before me. I watched them ask all my questions as I freaked out quietly. The situation was making me feel quite shy. The camera crew were filming every interview for god-knows-what and the 30-strong entourage were sitting in total silence, smoking, drinking from PIMP cups, and listening to all the questions and taking Wayne's lead on whether to be offended by them. I resolved myself to being really sycophantic.

When it was my turn I went and sat on the sofa next to Wayne. He didn't seem too hyped to meet me, but I thought maybe he was nervous too huh? Anyway, long story short, it was a pretty shitty interview, because despite my plans to be a right arse-kisser, for some reason my second question was about his eyelid tattoos. "You've got 'Fear' and 'God' written on your eyes, and I wonder," I posited, in full pompous flow, "if that's because you're scared of God's judgment after you die. I wonder if you're scared you've lived a bad life?" I was quite pleased with this, but Wayne wasn't, he shifted in his seat and asked me to repeat myself. As I did his entourage started walking towards me, looking outraged. Somewhere in the corner my photographer was lol'ing.

I reminded myself of my plan to be a real suck up and ploughed on down that route. Which obviously made everyone a lot more comfortable. And I'd like to think me and Weezy really, really bonded that day.

Anyway, our lives continued, Wayne sold millions of copies of Tha Carter III, my article came out, I doubt anyone read it. Like ships in the night, me and Weezy just continued as though that powerful meeting had never happened.

About a year later Prancehall emailed me: "Did you ever meet Lil Wayne?" Yep. "Oh right, well in Tha Carter Documentary you can hear a really nervous English guy. He's asking him all these really sucky questions like if Wayne realizes he's a genius, and if he really is an immortal talent like James Brown or Elvis. It's kind of embarrassing" Great.

So that's how I met my best friend in the whole world, Lil Wayne. And he got arrested over the weekend for allegedly attacking someone with a skateboard, so I’m sitting by the phone on the off chance that I'm his one call.

Cool story, bro.

@terriblesoup