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A Year of Lil Wayne: The Time Lil Wayne Rapped Over "C.R.E.A.M."

Is it Wu-Wayne Clan? Wayne-Tang Clan? Either way, throw up the W.

Day 217: "Cream" feat. Euro – Dedication 5, 2013

At various junctures in my life, my favorite rap music has been made by the Wu-Tang Clan, and at others it has been made by Lil Wayne. So one might imagine my surprise as I sifted through the beguiling but often brilliant mess that is Dedication 5 this week to find that Lil Wayne chose, 20 years after its release, to rap over the most iconic Wu-Tang beat of all time, "C.R.E.A.M."

This is notable because a) Lil Wayne freestyles are typically, although not always, over relatively current beats, which in the case of Dedication 5 meant songs like "Bitch Don't Kill My Vibe," "Levels," and "Type of Way" and b) this is just tossed in there as another forgettable track in a sequence of others. These days, a new rapper might make a song rapping over "C.R.E.A.M." and issue a whole press release about it, calling it something stupid like "1993xxFlowxx" and turning it into an event about their love of the Wu, as if this is something to be proud of rather than simply a baseline for understanding music culture at large. For Wayne, though, something like "C.R.E.A.M." is just baked into who he is. Of course he would go crazy on a beat like this.

Sure, it was probably a conscious decision to put Euro, a rapper Wayne considered to be Young Money's next lyrical star, over a beat where his rapping would naturally be compared to a great like Raekwon's (he makes out pretty well in his short appearance with the lines "mama would call the lord before she call the law / then I went and found time in an Audemars"). But on the other hand, Wayne spends his time on the song making low stakes moves like shouting out Murphy Lee and comparing himself to Def Leppard. He makes a basketball quip about a friendship fading away. It's all rapped expertly, with no grand meaning behind it. Compared to the original, it is pretty much devoid of substance. But that's OK. There's no need to make an event out of every song, which is a failing of our era. Sometimes it's just fine that something exists, as itself, as a quiet conversation between two periods of history or as an easy nod from a fan who just enjoys the Wu.

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