A Year of Lil Wayne: On That Good Kush and Alcohol

Day 209: "Love Me" feat. Future and Drake – I Am Not a Human Being 2, 2013

Welcome to Weed Week at VICE, a celebration of all things reefer related. As you can imagine, Noisey, VICE's biggest pothead vertical, is pulling out all the stops, and that includes turning the Year of Lil Wayne over to the topic of THC (and I'm not talking THa Carter!). Given that one of his signatures is to announce his appearance on a track with the sound of him sparking a lighter (see: the most recent Drake album), it may come as little surprise that there is plenty to discuss when it comes to Lil Wayne and marijuana.

However, one of the first phrases that springs to mind when Wayne and weed are involved is not his at all: It's Future's hook on "Love Me," which, even by the standards of Future hooks, is incredibly memorable. It goes: "I'm on that good kush and alcohol / I got some down bitches I could call / I don't know what I would do without y'all / I'ma ball 'til the day I fall." There's also the Drake post-hook that gives the song its name, but, by my unscientific estimates, if you were to ask 100 people about this song, 95 of them would sing Future's hook instead of Drake's. The lesson here is that kush > bitches every time, which is a statement that contains a second lesson about degrading attitudes toward women. But anyway.

The song is notable in that it is the only song that features all three artists and also because it is one of Wayne's biggest hits since Tha Carter IV, even if it is really Future's—and Mike Will's—hit. The FBG: The Movie version is better than the Wayne version by any stretch of the imagination, but Wayne's version is the single and the one that got a video, so here we are discussing that one.

It is: Not that great. It's not like Wayne is traditionally a paragon of enlightened gender views (despite his bona fides as cunnilingus champion), but even setting a low bar, "Love Me" is an unnecessarily gross and vicious track. Whether he's telling a girl who just wants to spend time with him that he fucks who he wants or proclaiming "these hoes got pussies like craters / can't treat these hoes like ladies," Wayne is not offering much substance here, nor is he giving the Real Kush and Alcohol Lovers much to go on (he does say "pussy, money, weed, codeine / she say my dick feel like morphine," I guess). The result is one of Wayne's worst singles. His final verse, where he quips "kiss my ass if you hating / I'm getting ass and I'm skating," is more or less the mission statement of IANAHB2-era Wayne.

Yet if there is a silver lining here, it's that this hook was one of several that elevated Future from regional star to rap radio staple, his own no-worries attitude a counterpoint to Wayne's more toxic one. Once again, proof that kush > bitches. Focus on the Mary Jane, not the misogyny.

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