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Music

A Year of Lil Wayne: "I Can't Feel My Face"

"Your boyfriend is softer than the carton the eggs in."

Day 19: "I Can't Feel My Face" – Da Drought 3, 2007​

It's weird to think that, with the passage of time, a reference so perfectly on the nose that it alone was proof of unqualified brilliance might now not even make sense to a new generation. Perhaps there are kids out there who hear Wayne rapping here and shrug, oblivious to the genius that is the line, "I been around, I'm still around like them Geico cavemen." Remember those ads? Those ads were such a phenomenon for so long that they made a spinoff TV show. Based on characters in an ad! What a world we once lived in. Anyway, the Geico cavemen are still around in my heart, and thus so is Wayne—or realistically it's the other way around; we'll always have the Geico cavemen because of Wayne—and what better way to contemplate his timelessness than this song right here, one of the many tour de forces that appears on Da Drought 3.

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This song has, among other accomplishments:

- An iconic Gucci flip flops reference almost a decade pre-Future
- Which set up a punchline about what, for me, was the most important movie of the 90s, Free Willy
- Which in turn led into some particularly considered wordplay riffing on the members of TLC
- This perfect burn: "Your boyfriend is softer than the carton the eggs in."

And then there are also two of the most quotable Wayne lines of all time, the kind that rap geeks pass around like trading cards: "I don't fear nothing but God and weddings"—the mantra of militantly ardent bachelors everywhere—and "I spy hip-hop in the ocean I'm gonna save it." Need proof? Here it is.

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