FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

Music

A Year of Lil Wayne: Finessin' in Auto-Tune

If it weren’t for Lil Wayne, the genre of Post Malone-core would not exist, and neither would Young Money's Post Malone, Baby E.

Day 232: "Finessin' (Remix)" feat. Lil Wayne – Baby E, No Ceilings 2, 2015

If it weren't for Lil Wayne, the genre of Post Malone-core, i.e. beautiful floating soundscape rap about doing drugs, would not exist. And—in one of the odd circular logic twists of influence—if it were not for Post Malone-core, there would be no Baby E, a.k.a. Young Money's version of Post Malone. And if there were no Baby E, there would be no Lil Wayne remix of Baby E's one popular song, "Finessin'."

"Finessin'" lost the rap hit sweepstakes against Post Malone's "White Iverson" and thus is likely to fade into obscurity despite being an objectively awesome song. (Watching the video for the remix, it quickly becomes apparent that the reason for this flop was likely due to Baby E being the least cool-looking artist ever.)

But the point remains that if it were not for Lil Wayne singing love songs to lean through Auto-Tune, there wouldn't be music that sounded like this for Wayne to remix. He handles that remix in a similarly discursive way by rhyming "bag" with itself three times in a row. Whatever. It's about the sound, not the rhymes, and the simple truth is that even eight years after he figured out that Auto-Tune sounds like the aural equivalent of prescription painkillers, Lil Wayne still sounds incredible floating like this.

Follow Kyle Kramer on Twitter.