A Year of Lil Wayne: The Original Yeezy and Weezy

Day 106: "We Are The Brothas" feat. Young Yo – SQ1 , 2002

It's an odd quality of contemporary music that rappers are expected to just be friends with other well known rappers—and, by extension, make music with them. I mean, why have Lil Wayne and a dude he went to high school with on a track when you can have an all-star studio sesh with Lil Wayne and whatever artist has the most memeable song of the month?

People feel this way, I guess, due to a combination of the easy communication provided by the internet and the way bystanders on the internet create their ideal fantasy collaborations. But while it's fun to imagine what would happen if ZOMG KENDRICK LAMAR AND JAY Z got together on a track, there's a separate appeal to the organic feeling of a collaboration between two people who are tried-and-true pals.

Enter Young Yo, who is indeed a dude Lil Wayne went to high school with (in what I assume is Sqad Up's official bio but which is now only discoverable on last.fm, Yo says "I was always fly and fresh when I was younger and thats how me and Wayne got jam tight.") Although fellow Sqad Up members like Gudda Gudda and Dizzy have re-emerged in recent years, Young Yo and Lil Wayne haven't made music together in a while (the only commentary I've found on it is a forum post that suggests they fell out over a girl). Yet back during the glory days of the Sqad they might have been the closest of all. Certainly, this song has some of the most satisfying back and forth rapping you'll hear anywhere.

In particular, I'm a fan of the section that kicks off with Yo quipping, "they call me Yeezy" and Wayne responding "they call me Weezy." Yo picks it back up: "she call me all day, ma be easy / she call me daddy"—then Wayne—"I lost my daddy / and crack was my foster parents." How smooth is that?

Wayne also ends the track by shouting out an entire roster of friends, which is another thing that is a hallmark of basically all classic rap tapes and is something that almost never finds its way onto a contemporary project. Considering that the only thing lost by not including tracks that involve two-minute shoutouts is potential streaming revenue, I'm not sure why, but I guess there's this idea now that everything you release has to be perfectly polished, lest it be the one thing that finally goes viral. After all, you've never seen Drake put any of his childhood friends except OB O'Brien on a track before, have you? Why not? You'd think at a time when we seem to value authenticity more than ever we'd be all for people shouting out their pals. Maybe it's because we also live in a time when nobody is going to listen to a track that they can just skip. Either way, I'm happy to listen to Wayne shout out his friends, and I encourage all of you, rappers and otherwise, to do the same.

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