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Music

A Year of Lil Wayne: "Blooded"

“Getting high on a yacht / call it seaweed.”

Day 118: "Blooded" –  Da Drought 3 , 2007

One of these days I suppose I'll need to write a smart essay about Wayne's affiliation as a Blood and the long-running role it plays in his music, but it's Sunday, so I'd rather just talk about the extremely good rapping he does on Jeezy's "I Luv It" and enjoy the song on those terms. I mean, he says, "getting high on a yacht / call it seaweed." This isn't the time to overthink things. What a great line. Or, if you have a different set of smoking habits, how about this one: "smoked out my mind, baby / now I'm seeing 3D."

Coming to the conclusion that Lil Wayne is the greatest rapper isn't an instantaneous thing. It's moreso an accrual of the thousands of moments where he says something in a way you've never heard someone say it before, all the tiny twists of his voice and turns of phrase that any other rapper might stumble across occasionally but that Wayne wields in aggregate. He proves the point with sheer scale. So, to add to the tally, here are some on this song: He refers to his jewelry as "skittles on my wrist"; he riffs on the physical structure of the word Lamborghini, rapping, "just like Young Jeezy in the lima bean 'ghini"; he points out that if his car's speedometer goes to 200, "y'all know I'm gonna try" and if the cops pull him over "y'all know I'm gonna lie"; he rags on his friends, quipping, "I told my homie Streets you can't sleep on life / so he popped an X pill and didn't sleep all night"; he says, "bitches wish they could just call and order me." Then there's the whole part where he interpolates Jeezy, the hottest street rapper out at the time and the dramatic conclusion, where he laughs, "my mama used to tell me get a nine-to-five / Cash Money made her say 'Never mind, I'm fine.'"

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