A Year of Lil Wayne: Just a Mixtape

Day 224: "Just Me and Her" feat. Gata – 2008?

One of the things that constantly amazes me about Lil Wayne is how many songs he has that are somebody's favorite. Sure, pretty much everyone agrees that a core set of his songs are the classics, but the catalog is so huge that there are a ton of personal classics sprinkled in there. Case in point: Alex's post yesterday, where he talked about "Demolition Pt. 1" playing in the Carter documentary. He loves that song, but Wayne probably doesn't even remember it exists. After all, at the end of the scene, a journalist asks him what the song is called, and Wayne responds, "It's just a mixtape, man. Ain't got titles."

That quote alone explains, like, pretty much everything about the way Wayne thinks and records: It's not so much about the end product as the process. A song is what sounds good. And if that's the case, then it stands to reason that among all the shards of sound buried in his catalog there are plenty that don't quite fit in anywhere yet are truly beloved. It's just a mixtape. Ain't got titles.

Which brings me to this weird little song, which I found on the LilWayneHQ forums in a post about Wayne songs with Auto-Tune. The poster who mentioned it, WeezyFan, dubbed it as "CLASSIC SHIT" and later followed up by claiming, "I think its the best masterpiece he ever recorded behind Hustler Musik." How you end up with this and "Hustler Muzik" as your two favorite Lil Wayne songs I'll never know, but that is a good example of exactly what I'm talking about: To at least one fan, this odd garble of Auto-Tune is up there with one of Wayne's most classic singles. And that's despite the fact that it's apparently a leak of a song by Tyga's former hypeman, it's not officially available anywhere, and it's almost impossible to find even on the infinite planes of the internet. I'd certainly never heard of it.

"Just Me and Her" is a good example of Wayne's early Auto-Tune use, where he wouldn't set the software to match the key he was singing in, leaving him to sound particularly abrasive. Lyrically, there's not much going on either. But perhaps you might find some beauty in the way Wayne's voice swoops through the word "her," turning it into three syllables and thus capturing some of the emotional power of love itself. Or maybe you'll hate this song. That's OK, too. There are plenty out there. It's just a mixtape. Ain't got titles.

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