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Music

A Year of Lil Wayne: Collegrove's "Gotta Lotta"

Today, Lil Wayne asks questions of pop music.

Day 13: "Gotta Lotta" – 2 Chainz and Lil Wayne, COLLEGROVE, 2016

People often talk about Wayne as a stylistic innovator, but usually it's meant within the context of technical rapping. Yet I'd add that, other than maybe Kanye, there's really no rapper from Wayne's generation as interested in the broader question of what form pop music might take. Wayne doesn't ask the question as pointedly or as loudly as Kanye, nor does he only give us the best possible answers like Kanye; he just keeps on trying out weird shit and seeing what works.

It leads to very hit or miss results: Maybe he'll stumble upon making Auto-Tune the definitive sound of 2010s rap music or maybe he'll just make something like "Gotta Lotta," which sounds like he wrote the hook after listening to a steady diet of 80s power ballads and 90s Europop. This definitely feels like it could be a Rebirth cut. It's cool to see where he takes it melodically in the verse, and there's something about singing like he's teasing out the words for an arena that makes them really pop when he sings, "I mean, please, don't you cowards know? / We will leave your bloody body on your mama's porch." Touching

There's even a couple rare moments of 2 Chainz doing slinky Auto-Tuned words in his verse, which makes this a collector's item song if nothing else. For whatever it's worth, though, Spotify and Apple Music both pull this up as the first (so presumably most popular) song from ColleGrove when you search 2 Chainz and Lil Wayne, so perhaps Wayne's pop experiment paid off after all. Should that be a surprise? If history is any guide, probably not!

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