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Music

A Year of Lil Wayne: A Bit More on the Wayne/DJ Khaled Symbiosis

"Miami, Khaled took me in like an orphan."

Day 150: "Brown Paper Bag" feat. Young Jeezy, Juelz Santana, Fat Joe, Lil Wayne, Rick Ross, and Dre – DJ Khaled, We the Best, 2007

All week, we've been talking about how great DJ Khaled posse cuts are and, more to the point, how inseparable a lot of that greatness is from Lil Wayne. Wayne is on every Khaled album except for 2008's We Global, which does have a Birdman feature, and there's no denying that the two's careers are linked. Much of Khaled's success is tied to the fact that he had Wayne to help power some of his big early singles, particularly "We Takin' Over," as previously discussed, and those likewise helped cement Wayne's place as a superstar. Khaled and Wayne's relationship goes back to New Orleans, but it was truly post-Katrina, when Wayne relocated to Miami, that the two became linked. And then it was that era that spawned much of the next decade of rap, including much of Wayne's classic material, lots of which he recorded at the Hit Factory in Miami.

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In "Brown Paper Bag," a deep cut from We the Best that nonetheless has just as much star firepower as the hits—Young Jeezy, Juelz Santana, Fat Joe, Wayne, and Rick Ross is quite the lineup—Wayne addresses that relationship, before just going off in this crazy run about being Superman:

Understand I been in that water like I'm a dolphin
Miami, Khaled took me in like an orphan
Why did they start him, now they can't park him
I go into the booth and just change like Clark Kent
Lamborghini dark tint, Philly blunt cigar scent

It's dope as hell, and it is, as they say, another one—another example of Wayne going off and another instance of Wayne and Khaled being inexorably linked, two stars making an even bigger binary star or whatever the appropriate space analogy is.

Photo by Matt Seger. Follow him on Instagram.

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